A Lingering Fringe
by pinkbagels
Summary: COMPLETE! Becoming a girl is tricky but you can't deny an advantage when you see one. Just ask Jimmy's opinion on the matter. What happened in Vegas wants to hunt you down and kill you. Too bad you gave that freaky chick Sam Winchester your cell number.
1. Chapter 1

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: one

Rating: PG-13

Characters: Dean/Castiel-ish, Bobby, Sam

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke), it would hover somewhere in the middle of season five.

Summary: What happened in Vegas refused to stay there. There are consequences to every decision, to every destiny. The pattern is in the fallout.

(notes: This is going to be a biggie, and if anyone reads my lj regurlarly you know I will finish it :D)

a lingering fringe--chapter one

The weirdest thing was, they still looked like the Sam and Dean he knew. Bobby let out a low whistle, and adjusted his dusty cap, a layer of sweat plastering the blue plastic clasp close against the back of his skull. What made the whole thing weirder still was how they didn't even have to change clothes, since everything sort of still fit the same. Same hair, same expressions, same shape of the eyes, ears, nose, mouth. If Bobby had to pinpoint exactly how they had changed, other than the obvious, it would be a certain overall softening of their rougher edges, with their muscles slightly less defined. Smoother skin. A diminished broadness in the shoulders. Good looking, though, but this was more a testament to family resemblence. Just more proof that John and Mary Winchester had mighty strong genes.

Dean tossed the demon knife onto the table, and gestured angrily at it. "If you think we're demons, go ahead and use it."

"Dean, come on," Sam protested.

"No," Dean firmly asserted. "If Bobby thinks we're hellspawn, even after us proving over and over that we aren't, then I guess he can do what he needs to do." Dean's jaw was set firm. "Right, Bobby?"

Bobby sat on the edge of the motel bed, his rough hands rubbing the shock from his system as he massaged his neck. He cracked it, getting out the last, unwelcome kink. "You been like this how long?" he asked.

"A week," Sam quietly said.

"You gotta help us, Bobby," Dean said, grabbing a beer from the mini-fridge, and tossing one to Bobby who caught it with one fat hand. "I can't live like this. I mean, seriously, put a silver bullet in me, something, just undo this!"

Sam sighed. "You're being a drama queen. It's not that bad, there's way worse that could have happened."

Dean seethed in fury over this. "You've got to be kidding me. You would actually be okay living like this? For the rest of your life?"

Sam let out a frustrated hiss. "For God's sake, Dean, it's not like we were turned into toads or given horns. We look normal."

"That's not the point!" Dean shouted.

Bobby gave them both a level glare, his fingers nervously brushing the tip of his ballcap, his mind shrugging around different hexes and spells that could be used to break whatever it was that had been done to Sam and Dean. "So, like you said before, you tried the alchemical formations of Althazar, but they didn't work. You tried drinking salted holy water, no go." Bobby shrugged. "What about mandrake tea, you tried that?"

"First thing we thought of," Sam said.

"Then I don't know what to tell you," Bobby said, the air between them thick with disappointment. "What does Castiel think of all this?"

"Cas," Dean spat the angel's name. "Yeah. Some help he is."

"It's not his fault, Dean," Sam said. "He tried every archaic symbol he knew, nothing worked. Look, don't get too flustered about this, okay? He said he's working on it."

"Yeah, well it's hardly a tall priority for him, Sam. Frankly, his whole angelic innocence thing is getting real old, fast," Dean muttered. "Of course he's not too worried, he doesn't see a problem at all. In fact, he's so gender glaucomic, if I stood naked in front of him he'd be asking me to pass the salt for his damned chips!"

"We really have to get him to improve his diet," Sam agreed. "The human body can't live on french fries morning, noon and night."

"It's the only thing he's learned how to eat," Dean reminded Sam. "Have you forgotten that incident with the burrito? Man, I never knew somebody could choke on a black bean."

'It wasn't a black bean," Sam said, making a face. "Trust me, I'm never eating a burrito again, either."

The motel door swung open, putting everyone in the room on high alert. Bobby stood up in deference to the being who had managed to snatch Dean Winchester out of the clutches of Hell. No matter if he were fallen or not, it had to be a good plan to keep an angel on your side, a fact Dean was forgetting. Castiel held two large paper bags in his arms, his expression blank as he noted the worried frowns directed his way. "Greetings, Bobby," he said.

"Hey there yourself," Bobby replied. He studied Castiel as the fallen angel placed the paper bags of groceries on the table in the kitchenette. The items that had been purchased were taken out with great care, as though even the roll of toiletpaper was at risk of smashing like glass at his touch. Castiel looked drawn, Bobby noted, his cheeks hollow, his skin pasty. Being human wasn't doing him much good.

Dean dug into the grocery bags, roughly pushing Castiel and his careful movements aside as the contents were tumbled loudly onto the table. "Where are they?" Dean shouted. A small red bottle rolled along the surface of the table, nearly toppling off only to be rescued by Dean's quick reflex. Dean read the bottle's label and nodded. "Advil. Extra-Strength. Good. Now, where's that other stuff I asked for?" Dean's face paled, a stack of picnic napkins in a white knuckled grip. The soft paper cloths had pictures of frolicking bunnies stamped on them, the sale sticker proclaiming, in big orange numbers, $1.99. "What the hell is this?"

Castiel shrugged, not understanding. "You told me to get napkins."

"Not these kind," Dean furiously growled through clenched teeth.

The package was thrown at Castiel, hitting him in the face. Dean had a death grip on the bottle of Advil, and after a torrent of furious curses Dean stormed into the bathroom, the door slammed shut, the lock loudly bolted into place. Bobby winced at the ensuing din. Either the walls of this particular motel room were exceptionally thin, or Dean's howling sobs really were that hystrionic.

"I don't understand what I did wrong," Castiel said, his wounded expression turned on Sam.

"It's nothing," Sam quickly assured him, "It's just, you know, human body stuff. To do with the endochrine system." Castiel's confusion didn't abate, and Sam instantly went into Discovery channel mode. "See, once a month there's these hormonal changes and while it's only been an issue for Dean and I for a week, Dean was unlucky enough to get stuck on this natural cycle when we were..."

"I have never observed either you or Dean having this particular issue before," Castiel blandly interjected.

"Well...Uh...Considering recent events and the changes that have happened, it's all perfectly normal. Even if how we got this way isn't, the symptoms and the physiology are definitely medically sound." Castiel's wounded expression now had a further confused aspect to it that pulled harshly on Sam's clinical resolve. "You have to appreciate, Cas, that this is a very difficult thing to explain to someone who has never had a corporeal body before."

Bobby picked up the package of picnic napkins, letting out a low whistle as he noticed the tiny bunnies printed on the surface were chasing birds and bees.

"What purpose does this physiological cycle serve?"

"Oh God. I can't have this conversation with you right now, Cas," Sam said, voice hovering on panic. "Just, never mind, you don't need to think about it. It's, uh..."

"Girl stuff," Bobby interjected, much to Sam's equal parts mortification and relief.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Thanks, Bobby."

"Oh," Castiel said, brought into instant clarity. "This is that problem you and Dean have said you have been experiencing."

"Obviously," Sam said.

"Like a Mac truck in the face, obvious," Bobby added. Angel or not, Castiel was clearly not going to be much help in this situation. Heck of a problem they had here. Bobby took a long swig of his beer, its cold comfort doing little to ease his anxiety as he thought on his good friend John Winchester and the pride he'd held in his boys. He was sure that pride would have extended just as much to daughters. Maybe even more so, who knows?

Castiel was at the bathroom door, his hand halted in mid knock, unsure of whether or not it was safe to persue the matter. Bobby set his jaw at this, not liking the feel of it. Seemed a strangely intimate gesture for a supposed angel of the Lord to be making. He glanced back at Sam, who was morosely poking at the keyboard of her laptop, her bottom lip cutely bitten as she studied the words she'd conjured up on Google. The newly delicate features of her face were brought into relief by the light of the laptop, and for a moment a sudden surge of fatherly protectionism welled inside of Bobby, one that wasn't easy to swallow with a good gulp of brew. Sure, they still knew how to protect themselves, and he shouldn't really have to be concerned, but certain societal norms had been taught to him way before he'd ever become a hunter. Damn, John Winchester had to thank Heaven that he'd only seen sons. These girls of his would have given him one hell of an extra, unwelcomed worry.

"Start all over at the beginning," Bobby said to Sam. "I can't say it'll make any difference, but you never know. Sometimes it's good to hear a story twice, three times, hell twenty, if only to find a detail that weren't there before. So start slow, and make sure you don't leave nothing out."

"I didn't," Sam insisted.

"Then you won't mind reciting it again," Bobby sternly told her.

Sam groaned in impatience and shut her laptop with a soft click. The anti-hexing design on its surface seemed to mock her with its efficiency.

"We were going after a job in Vegas," she began. "But unlike the ad says, nothing stayed there."

///

one week earlier

"Oh, man." Dean's eyes were lit up like he'd been presented with a gift from the magi. "Vegas. I love Vegas!"

Sam ignored Dean's excited fidgeting in the driver's seat, opting instead to concentrate on the notes he'd gleaned from Bobby. He earned a harsh punch in the shoulder from his brother. "Come on, Sam! Loosen up! Check it out, this place is awesome! Busy streets, lots of people partying." Their car pulled up alongside a convertable practically bursting with blonde, bikini-clad women. They gave Dean's smiling interest a collection of giggling waves before speeding off ahead as soon as the light turned green. "All the bustle, people winning, people losing. All that adrenaline. Man. It's like I can *taste* it, you know? Life. Busy, noisy, dirty, flashy life."

Sam wasn't so convinced. He glanced up at the streaks of neon, their overdone glamour making him wince. "I don't know. It's just so fake."

"The lights are beautiful."

Castiel's observation was one of tantalized wonder, and Dean couldn't help but bite back on his grin. "See Sam? Even the angels love Vegas."

Sam closed his notebook, a familiar annoyance welling within him. "Those lights are manmade," Sam said to Castiel. "God's got nothing to do with them."

"I can't wait to hit the casinos," Dean said, sharply turning a corner and catching a glimpse of some very busty ladies of the evening. One particularly gold glittered sweetheart blew him a kiss, and Dean's joy was set to burst. "Oh yeah, I'm hitting this place first!" He hung his head out the window of the Impala. "I'll be back for you in an hour, gorgeous!"

He got a tantalizing wave in reply, along with a few smirking nods of interest from that gold draped beauty's friends. Dean hit the steering wheel with his wrists, beating out the drum beat off The Who's 'Pinball Wizard' as it shouted out of the radio. "Woo! We are going to have fun tonight--You got to admit, we damn well deserve this."

"Watching you pick up some crab infested skank, get wasted drunk and puke your guts out on or just outside the bathroom floor, along with losing all the money in your pocket, thus depleting our emergency cash flow, is hardly my idea of a good time."

"Fine," Dean said, still drumming along on his steering wheel. "I'll drop you off at the library for that free showing of Grey Gardens, it starts at eight. Or maybe you'd rather hang out at the horticultural centre, I hear they've discovered a new breed of orchid. Your pick, Sammy, you can go wherever it is that men with no dicks go."

Sam scowled at his brother. "We're doing our job and we're leaving."

Dean scoffed at this. "Says you."

Sam wanted to argue the point further, but Castiel leaned forward, his head neatly tucked between them as he read off of what looked to Sam to be an index card. " 'Does this establishment have bathing facilities?' Did I say that correctly?"

Sam took the index card from Castiel and puzzled over it. "What is this?"

"Yeah, Cas was wanting to be the one to rent the hotel room, this time," Dean said. "And, you know, since he's been having some issues with interacting with people like a normal guy I made up some cue cards to help him along." Dean turned down the car stereo. "I mean, he can't be going up to complete strangers saying 'The glorious might of Heaven shall smite Lucifer this day' when a simple 'Raining again? Bummer' would do. Not to mention little things, like going on a beer run and knowing how much change to get back. Or, as in this case, knowing how to book a room."

"That was kind of you," Sam evenly said. He pointed at the stack in Castiel's grip. "Let me see those."

He had to hand it to Dean, he'd certainly made the instructions clear. Every step of every action was neatly categorised, ensuring that Castiel couldn't slip up:

1: Walk to counter

2: Smile and say hello and not in your usual Zombie Angel Your Face Is Fascinating kind of way. Just a simple nod, a simple hello. Very little eye contact. Srsly.

3: Ask for a room, preferably two bedrooms, definitely two beds. Like I said before I'M NOT SHARING.

4: Make sure there's a shower. Ask 'Does this establishment have bathing facilities?' You'll totally sound like a hopeless, misplaced tourist (hopeless tourist=no one remembers you and that's a GOOD THING)

5: Hand them the Visa (a small diagram illustrated this), sign the paper and you're done. No intense, uncomfortable blessings, no eye smoochies or questioning if anyone has seen Demonic Activity or Sam.

"This must have taken you some time," Sam observed.

"Just helping out a pal," Dean said, grinning.

Sam wasn't so sure when he came to the pile marked 'relationships'. "Dean, there's stuff in here on how to pick up women."

"I told you, anything for a friend."

"Friends don't let friends use your crappy pick up lines."

He handed the cards back to Castiel. "I'd be exercising caution with these if I were you." Castiel held Sam's gaze for an inordinate amount of time, forcing Sam to remember, yet again, that newly fallen angels had issues with the subtlties of personal space. "You know what, just use the one for booking the hotel. Word for word."

Castiel slumped into the back seat, the index cards still in his grip as he shuffled the deck and puzzled over their contents. "Why is it significant I never mention a woman's weight?" he asked. He frowned, reading the rest of the hastily scrawled instructions on the card. "What does it mean here, when it says I should insist I like big butts?"

Sam bit his bottom lip, his smirk only slightly derailed. "You are so going back to Hell, Dean."

Dean gave his younger brother a wide grin in reply. "Yeah. I know."

///

"I sex chicks for a living."

Dean raised a brow at this, the pencil he was using as he pretended to take false notes in Sam's notebook arrested in mid-doodle. The young man standing before them went by the name of Josh Horihito, and it was he who called in the calvary to deal with mysterious goings on at the Upper Country Hatchery where he worked. "Look, like I said to Bobby, it was just a false alarm." He crossed his arms, the Hawaiian shirt he was wearing now a collection of folded fans and pineapples. "I was just going by what the grapevine's been telling me. Keep an eye out for weird shit and pass it along." He glanced shiftily from side to side, as though fearful a demon was going to crawl out of the desert sand and nail him. A valid fear, it had nearly happened once before. "You guys aren't on the popular list right now. Word is, the Winchester boys are set to get smoked for going darkside and kudos goes to the first hunter who makes it happen."

"So how come you're not on the bashing bandwagon?" Dean asked.

Josh's shifty gaze was making everyone nervous. "I don't care how the popularity machine works with your people, I just know that if you hadn't of exorcised that thing out of my sister my family would be nothing but a big pile of wasted guts and greasy BBQ ribsteaks. I saw what you did to that flesheater--I know you two wouldn't go darkside, like they're saying." Josh's shifty glance coursed over the plain, yellow building to his right. "There was some weird shit happening at the hatchery up until yesterday."

"Certainly smells like it," Sam said, filtering the air through the sleeve of his jacket. "God, that's *rank*."

"Don't you mean *fowl*," Dean said, grinning.

Neither Sam nor Josh even so much as groaned at Dean's lame attempt of a joke. With the latter, it only earned Dean impatience. "Like I said, I sex the chicks. I make sure which ones are female, and send them off down one chute to grow into big, strong, egg laying cluck machines. The fellas go down the other chute."

"The 'other' chute?" Dean asked. "What happens to them?"

Josh shrugged. "They get ground up into organic cat and dog food. A good marginal profit niche, actually."

"Damn," Dean said, looking decidedly green. "It really sucks to be a rooster."

"Hey man, don't go getting all PETA on me, I'm just doing this job to get through college and finish off my masters." Josh's Hawaiian shirt was caught in the desert breeze, rustling pineapples competing with open fans. "You want to do the right thing and be kind to a chicken? Eat a damn egg so it never becomes a chicken. End of story."

"So what was this unusual phenomenon you were experiencing?" Sam asked, bringing Josh back on track.

"It's nothing," Josh said, his shoulders hunched in apology. "About a week ago, I'm sexing chicks, and then I start noticing that there's more males than females. Which isn't odd all by itself. Only, a few days later, we start getting more and more of them. A *lot* more. Like 80%. There's never odds like that--It's usually 60-40 in favour of hens." Josh Horihito looked over his shoulder, as though fearful this information was going to cost him his very future. A small snack truck drove into the hatchery laneway, parking only twenty feet from where they were standing. Josh eyed it with suspicion before continuing. "Then, as though that wasn't weird enough, by the third day, we're getting chicks I just can't sex at all. The fluffy little yellow fuckers don't even have assholes, you get what I'm saying?"

Dean tapped the tip of his pencil on the cover of Sam's notebook. "So...What chute would *they* go down?"

"It freaked me out, okay?" Josh said, his shoulders hunched tight, as though afraid Sam and Dean were going to reprimand him, maybe turn his Hawaiian shirt into pulpy fruit juice. "A good 90% of the chicks that week went into the grinder." He ignored Dean's choke of disgust. "Sure, it's not a seven foot monster cooking your dad on an open fire pit, with a side of mom salad waiting, but this was serious business for the hatchery. Stuff like that can put everything out of whack. We don't produce enough eggs, the company doesn't make enough profit, they have to lay people off, I lose my job, my masters degree is put on hold. It all can spiral out into bigger and bigger things, just from something so small and so...so *wrong*." Josh's worry pleaded for understanding. "If you want things to turn out the way they're supposed to, you have to keep a record of the balance. You got to pay attention."

"All right, I'll bite," Sam said, his eyes watering from the foul smell that continued to waft towards them from the hatchery. "I agree, a buttless chicken can pose a problem. What do you want us to do about it?"

"Nothing. I got a hold of Bobby this morning to call the hunt off," Josh said, his face reddening in embarassment. "Turns out the temperature meters on the incubators was off. One or two degrees difference can affect the sex of the chicks. As for the lack of everything, well, these chickens aren't exactly from a wide gene pool. It was probably just a mutation caused by inbreeding."

"So we're talking science here," Sam said.

"Yeah, just science," Josh replied, his pineapples crushed, his fans limp. "Nothing at all to do with demons." He gestured to the hatchery. "I got to get back to work. Sorry for dragging you guys out here for nothing."

"No problem, Josh. Good luck with college," Sam said.

"And say hi to that hot little sister of yours," Dean said, winking.

Josh gave them both a sad nod, and left them at the side of the road, the Nevada desert curling around the slightly frayed hem of their jeans. There was the sound of shuddering steel as the snack cart set up for the afternoon shift's break, the smell of stale hamburgers and grease competing with the stench of chicken crap. "Poor kid," Sam added when Josh was well out of earshot. "I guess having a run in with a flesheater like he did is enough to make anyone paranoid."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. He shaded his eyes from the sun and took a long look down the dusty horizon. "I'm starving," he said. He eyed the rusty hull of the snack wagon, and without a second thought he headed for it, the low murmer of his stomach cancelling out the arguments against salmonella poisoning.

"How can you even have an appetite?" Sam asked, dry heaving, his sleeve stubbornly cemented against his mouth and nose. Dean shrugged, and glanced over at the Impala, his brow creasing as he took in Castiel's bent posture and his dishevelled appearance in the back seat. "He's probably not eaten a thing all day," Dean reminded Sam. "We have to get something in him just in case he passes out from hunger."

"Maybe you should have written *that* on a notecard," Sam harshly replied, following his brother to the fly infested snack wagon. "A few words about nutrition couldn't hurt."

"Sam, you said it yourself, Cas doesn't have the first clue how the human body works." Dean rubbed his hands together in hungry glee at the rather limp offerings that were on display. "Yo, padre--two egg salad sandwiches." Sam kicked up a layer of dust behind him. "Come on, Sam, you heard what Josh said--I'm just doing my part for the fight against animal cruelty."

"You'd better not be ordering fries for him," Sam said, casting a worried look Castiel's way. "Ever since he fell out of Heaven's favour it's all he's lived on. He's going to start losing teeth to scurvy."

"I'm way ahead of you," Dean cheerfully replied. He flashed two dollar bills at the dour snack wagon owner. "Bean burrito. Heavy on the salsa." Sam's disapproval put Dean immediately on the defensive. "Salsa is chock full of veggie goodness," he protested.

"I swear you think cardboard is a food group," Sam replied.

"I don't know what you're so worried about," Dean complained. "For all we know he doesn't need to eat, even if he has fallen. I don't know if you noticed, but he didn't come with a manual."

"Figures," Sam said, taking the egg salad sandwich offered to him with some trepidation. He sniffed at it suspiciously while Dean barely had the plastic wrap off before he devoured half of his. "The Winchester clan's guardian angel came off the celestial Wal-Mart's clearance isle. With a final sale warning and a big orange $1.99 sticker stuck on his wing."

"That's not fair, and you know it," Dean sternly warned his younger brother.

Sam sighed, and bit into his egg salad sandwich. He chewed reluctantly. "This tastes funny."

But Dean wasn't concerned about the varieties of intestinal disquiet that were destined to be set upon them. His own stomach was lined with iron and a good portion of nuclear fortitude thanks to years of eating greasy rotgut. The closest Dean had ever come to eating salad was a limp piece of lettuce on a hamburger back in 1998, and he hadn't enjoyed the experience.

Dean slid into the driver's seat of the Impala, tossing the burrito to Castiel who ignored the offering as it dropped on the seat next to him. "Okay, here's the plan," Dean said, the Impala's engine purring to life as he fired up the ignition. "We head down to the strip, we send Cas to get us a room, while you and I head straight for the busiest casinos. How can we lose, Sam? We got our get out of Hell free cards and an angel at our shoulders. We're totally going to go high roller!"

Sam sulked in the passenger seat, a half-eaten egg salad sandwich still in his hand. He took very unhappy bites out of it at sporadic intervals, swallowing clearly an effort.

"I hate egg salad," Sam whined.

///

Bobby roughly rubbed his five o'clock shadow with his palm. "So, you figure it was the eggs?"

"We weren't sure at first," Sam said. "It wasn't until we got to the casino when things got really weird."

"Luck be a lady, that's what they always say." Dean quietly made her way out of the bathroom, collapsing onto the thick, red silk covers of the double bed, a limp pillow hugged tight as she curled into a foetal position.

Castiel, perhaps seeking martyrdom as a way of reclaiming the good graces of Heaven, placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Don't you fucking touch me!" Dean shouted, shoving him off and nearly sending the angel to the floor. "Freak!"

"I don't understand what I have done to offend you," Castiel evenly replied to Dean. "None of this was an issue for you yesterday."

Bobby raised a brow at Sam who, to Bobby's now hyperdrived fatherly worry, actually blushed at the scrutiny.

"It's been a whole week, Bobby. Stuff gets, you know, complicated," Sam tried to explain.

She drummed her fingers on the surface of her laptop. Her nails flushed pink.

"Like I said before...Everything got real weird at the casino."


	2. Chapter 2

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: two

Rating: PG-13

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel-ish, Bobby, girl!Sam

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke), it would hover somewhere in the middle of season five.

Summary: What happened in Vegas refused to stay there. There are consequences to every decision, to every destiny. The pattern is in the fallout.

a lingering fringe--chapter two

"Are you sure it's a good idea for him to get the room?" Sam rubbed his stomach, the egg salad sandwich clearly getting the upper hand in the fight against intestinal upset. "I mean, what if he signs the Visa slip 'Castiel, Angel of the Lord'?"

Dean grunted a dissent at this. "This is Vegas, Sam. I'm sure they've had God Himself sign a credit slip or two." He rubbed his hands together with the fervent glee of a true believer. "I'm hitting the blackjack tables first. With a whiskey chaser in my hand and a glittered up showgirl at my side." He nodded in the direction of the bar, a slim, heavily adorned young woman who looked as though she'd just stepped out of a chorus line leaning against it. "Like her." Dean slapped his brother on the back, and gave him a wide grin. "This is Vegas, bro. Go and do all the things Castiel probably doesn't want you to do."

Sam watched as his brother sauntered up to the bar, his confident swagger already gaining the positive attention of his target. Her smile was infectiously sweet, one that held the deep conviction that yes, she was very interested in Dean Winchester's company and no, it need not hold any of those complicated issues pertaining to committment or self-respect. This was about self-indulgence, most specifically Dean's--as long as the price was right. Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and walked out of the sparkling sprawl of the casino, the glare of a million golden light bulbs irritating him with their false purity.

The darkness of the street outside was exacerbated by that imposed brightness, and Sam narrowed his eyes into it as his vision adjusted to the vast differences in light. He didn't see the figure lurking in the shadows at the side of the entrance, the red ash of a lit cigarette the only clue that anyone was there at all.

"Hey, buddy," the guy said, getting Sam's attention, smoke from the cigarette drawn to the golden light beside them. Sam remained on alert as the man walked into view, shadows etched against the stranger's wide, muscular shoulders, ashes trickling to the sidewalk as he tapped his cigarette. 'A big enough guy', Sam thought, 'but not one I couldn't fight off if need be.' Shaved head, biker physique even if he was just wearing black jeans and a black hoodie. The hint of a tattoo peeked out from the open space at his collarbone, only to disappear from view again as the stranger took a piece of paper out of his pocket, cigarette dangling precariously between thin, determined lips. "Do you know where the Madonna Inn is?"

He has freaky blue eyes, Sam noted. Full of a kindness that was unrelated to the rest of his appearance. He gave Sam a warm smile, and it was this that disarmed him. The easy intelligence, the trusting assurance--This guy had human written all over him. He really was just another misplaced tourist.

"Take highway eight," Sam said, "and turn left at the nine. But I don't recommend the Madonna Inn, not unless you like roach dirt in your coffee."

"Thanks for the warning," the stranger replied. "I've had more than my fair share of that shit this week."

Sam glanced up at the entrance of the casino, its glittering promise tarnished by a few broken bulbs. "No lucky break?"

"I'm not a gambler," the stranger assured him. "This ain't my thing, I'm here on business."

"Oh?" Sam said, heading for the Impala. "What kind of business?"

"Research," the stranger replied. He took a long drag of his cigarette, the red ember flashing at its tip, making Sam nervous despite the fact this guy was harmless.

"Into the benefits of quitting smoking, I hope," Sam said. He gestured to the cigarette in the man's hand, its tip studied. "Those things will kill you."

"A lot of things will, but what really matters already killed me off," the stranger quietly mused, words mostly for himself. He coughed, embarassed as he remembered Sam was still there. "There's a series of astronomy lectures at the observatory I've been meaning to attend. Figured I'd catch them while I was here."

"Science guy, huh?" Sam said, narrowing his eyes. "I hope you don't mind my saying so, but you don't look the type."

"That's the thing about science," the stranger said, his knowing blue eyes shifting inward once again. "When you think you got it all figured out, it throws something strange and new at you."

"Part of its appeal," Sam said. Then, since he couldn't resist, "You know, I went to college, too. Stanford."

"I never went to college," the stranger cryptically answered, and seemed to be insulted by the association if the grimace he gave Sam was any indication.

"But you said you're going to a college lecture."

"A man can learn on his own time, can't he? College isn't the bastion of intelligence, the human mind is too complex for that kind of compartmentalization."

"Spoken like a true dabbler," Sam observed.

"I finish what I start," the stranger assured him.

Sam would have liked to pursue the odd conversation further, but his cell phone rang, and he turned away to answer it, not bothering to even say hello. "I have the room," Castiel's dour voice told him. "36th Avenue, near highway eight. On the east side. Room number forty-seven." The angel hung up before Sam could say good-bye, or even ask how the place looked. Small social graces were clearly lost on heaven's warriors. Hell, in the months since Lucifer had been freed and Cas had been fired, the guy had never once offered to make coffee, no matter how early they had to hit the road. That had to signify some kind of corruption to the soul.

Jimmy would have made them coffee. Sam was sure of it.

"Hey, there's a place just up the road that's better..." Sam said, only to discover he was talking to air. The stranger had already taken off, and for some odd reason Sam couldn't shake the feeling of disappointment that welled within him. It had been a long time since anyone had been willing to talk about intellectual matters that didn't relate back to demons and ghouls. The short exchange had been refreshingly human.

As he walked towards the Impala, the egg salad sandwich he'd eaten earlier came back with a vicious reminder. He clutched his stomach, the ache one that he'd been familiar enough with before. You couldn't live a life in skeevy motels and dusty diners without feeling the pangs of food poisoning once in a while. Sam winced as his abdomen lurched like a pulled muscle that kept spasming deep inside his body. Cursing Dean and his iron gut, Sam slid into the driver's seat, his cell phone in his hand as he texted his brother. "Heading to the motel. Feeling like crap. Taking the car. Thanks for lunch, asshole."He quickly punched in the address, and turned off the ringer. If Dean wanted to bitch about him driving off he could do it on foot later. Man, did he ever feel weird. Everything was out of balance, to the point even the seat was off kilter, as though it had been shifted further back from the steering wheel. Sam pulled the seat forward, wondering how in the hell Dean managed to drive in this poor a posture without becoming a hunchback. He searched for the keys he'd pilfered from his brother's leather jacket, and turned on the ignition, the motor purring to life like a well fed feline.

"Nice wheels, gorgeous!"

Sam raised a brow at the creature that walked past, a tall, gangly and not very well aged punk rocker sporting a black mohawk and a vintage Black Flag t-shirt. The relic held a pair of drumsticks in his hand, which he used to tap the hoods of cars as he passed. He winked at Sam, a crooked, flirtatious smile shot at him point blank, made all the more lecherous by his leathery skin and heroin addict physique.

"Ew," Sam said. His voice felt strange. Higher. Damn, that egg salad really was doing a number on his immune system. Time for gravol and a plate of unsalted crackers.

He glanced in his rear view mirror, checking for oncoming traffic. The sooner he got out of here...

Sam's mouth gaped open, as did the stranger who stared back. It took more than a few moments to realise that no, this wasn't a mirage, this was his face...No...HER face...That the two were not separated, in fact she, that woman, that delicate looking visage was, without mistake, wholly and decidedly Sam Winchester. Sam Winchester, part demon spawn, part hell's angel. Sam Winchester, son of John, brother of Dean. Sam Winchester--Without an adam's apple!

In terror, Sam's hands went to her chest, and with a cry of shock noted that there were new bumps to this physique, with another notable absence between the legs. "Oh shit!" Sam exclaimed, but her voice was not the one she was accustomed to, not this fairly breathy, higher lilt that sounded so alien in its panic. "Oh no!"

There was only one recourse to this kind of dark and perverse mojo. The angel Castiel had to know what to do, and Sam peeled out onto the street, heedless of oncoming traffic, her dainty foot shrivelled within too large sneakers, her heart hammering within her bosom like a pulsing drum set to snap. Castiel had to fix this, she couldn't live a second more in the shape of a woman, especially with time ticking and her brother's money starting to run out back at the casino. She glanced at her reflection again, and nearly veered off the road at the realization that not only did Sam now have the cutest button nose, her lips were sultry and downright *pouty*.

Dammit. Castiel had to fix this and quick. There was no way in any level of hell that Dean was going to let his little 'sister Sam' live this one down.

///

Dean was right in his assessment. He was going high roller. At least, in the sense that he had a girl draped on his arm, one with a few more scabby blemishes than were normal hidden beneath a thick layer of make-up, and sure, his shot of whiskey was watered down to molecules, but hey--He'd won twice in a row at the blackjack table, and he wasn't complaining. Not when he'd already lost fifty times not an hour before. Damn. No concierge breakfast this week thanks to his losses, they were stuck at the usual rounds at Denny's.

"Hit another one for me, sugar," his temptress beckoned him, and Dean grinned, more than willing to oblige.

"Blackjack! Dealer wins."

Dean sipped at his watered down whiskey with considerably less enthusiasm than two hands earlier. Two hundred dollars slipped from his fingers, and even though there was that tiny voice insisting he could win it back, he was relieved when his cell phone rang, giving him an excuse to leave the table.

"Going so soon?"

She was beautiful, in her own way, Dean supposed, but the costumed chorus girl with her heavily caked on eye make-up and burgeoning bustline wasn't, for some reason he couldn't fathom, doing it for him. The closer she sat next to him, the more he noticed how her perfume held a slightly vinegar scent, an aroma that was becoming more unpleasant as the night wore on. He tried pushing himself back into the game because, come on, she was a Showgirl--captial 'S', no less--and she didn't waste her time with the other poor slobs losing at the other tables, she was hanging around, betting on some Dean action. He tried to get himself in the mood by concentrating on the heaving roundness of her breasts, but all he could think when he gazed upon their glory was how she had a weird looking mole sitting close to her heart and should probably get a doctor to look at it. He attempted to steer his brain away from these thoughts of skin cancer, and to concentrate on the obvious marvellousness of her mammories, only to be blocked again by her tinny laugh, her weird smell, and an overall unhappy, definitely not turned on feeling that kept welling up unbidden. Sure, she was a nice enough chick and all, but damn. He just wasn't feeling the chemistry.

Which was odd, because Dean Winchester *always* felt the chemistry.

He excused himself from the table, making his way towards the rest rooms as he checked his text messages. Sam left him a curt note, letting him know he'd taken the car, and the address of the motel they were staying at. Dean cursed, the rubber plant that obscured his view of the blackjack table taking the brunt of his abuse as he gave its trunk a punch for angry emphasis. He'd be forced to walk on feet designed solely for hitting the gas pedal of his sleek, ebony, one true love. All this over a stupid egg salad sandwich. Sure, Dean was feeling a bit of an ache in the gut too, but you didn't see him whining all over town about it. Annoyed, he pocketed his cell phone. Sam could be such a girl.

He was about to make a stop in the men's room (all those watered down whiskies were starting to metabolize), only to be brushed aside by a tall, lanky punk rock reject circa 1981, complete with Black Flag t-shirt, eye-liner and a dog chain necklace. The fortyish King of Cool Wannabe looked Dean up and down and fixed a crooked, unwholesome grin in his direction.

"Looking good, Riot Grrrl!" the creep exclaimed.

"Ugh." Dean shuddered, watching his admirer's back as he sauntered past the far edge of the bar and then out the front doors, his ridiculously tall mohawk skimming the metal frame. Riot Grrl? What the hell was that, some kind of new kinky code for skeevy metrosexuals?

"God, I know what you mean." A familiar, off putting scent of flowered vinegar wafted out from behind him, and Dean turned slowly to see his Showgirl (capital 'S'!) slumped next to the rubber plant, her heavily painted lips sucking dilligently on the neck of a bottle of Jack's. "If it's not some creep pinching your ass, it's some suit looking for a freebie. I can't stand this place. I should have stayed in porn, at least that paid for my kid's braces. But, you know how that market is. Once you get past thirty-five, it's all fisting and anal." She waved her bottle at the leaves of the rubber plant, gesturing to where Dean had been losing spectacularly. "Nowadays I just bide my time helping losers get better at being bigger losers. Not a bad racket, you get to skim off the ten percent profit the dealer's make, but it's a hell of a lot of work just to stay off your back, know what I mean?"

Dean, obviously, didn't. "I don't understand. You're saying you don't even like the guy you've been spending the whole evening with?" Odd, his voice felt weird. Higher. He reached up to his throat, a strange curdling rising in his stomach as he discovered that a sincere lack of adam's apple suddenly initiated him into the truths of Showgirl (capital 'S') apathy.

"Like him?" his glittery, overly made-up and coarse date replied. "Honey, I pay so little attention these days, I couldn't even tell you what he's wearing."

Dean's fingers instinctively left her throat to travel down the length of her necklace. Just beneath the points of pewter, a rather large set of twin mounds and their generous cleavage pulled her worn army t-shirt tight. "I can't believe this is happening."

"Yeah, that's what I said when I first got here too, but what can you do? You got to survive, right?" She offered her bottle of Jack's to Dean, who drank from it like she'd spent the last week crawling through the Nevada desert. "Hell, girl, you know how to drink! I like that, reminds me of my own youth. Don't worry about Marty, if you want to freelance on the side here, he's not too picky as long as you give him his cut."

"Marty?"

"Yeah, the owner of this dump." Dean's date gave her a cool stare. "You're the new hire for the Friday night fill-in, aren't you? You might have to shave a few pounds off them hips, honey. Marty likes his girls looking sleek."

"Excuse me," Dean said, staggering away from--What had she said her name was? Bridgette? Margaret?--the gold lights of the casino making her dizzy as she rushed toward the exit. She wanted to be shocked, even horrified, that such a cruel spell had been utilised, but considering how much Dean had experienced while alive, and especially when dead, the only thought she had was why some demon pervert hadn't tried this parlour trick sooner.

The Vegas strip at night was awash with flashing neon and drunken losers, their pockets empty, all prospects lost to chance. A few catcalls were directed Dean's way, and she did her best to keep her encroaching rage at bay. One asshole, so drunk he could barely stand, his tie askew, his black jacket soaked in rum, tried to grab her by the arm as she walked past. A quick twist and a shove broke his wrist and sent him cowering at the base of a fire hydrant. The motel was at least two more blocks away, and Dean grimaced at the thought of having to deal with more of these clowns along the way. Being the hottest chick on the block was already a damn nuisance.

She caught her reflection against a shiny black marble wall, and while she wasn't exactly the hot blonde cheerleader she once fantasized about becoming (man, that had been a weird moment), at least there was no mistaking the amazing, provocative powers of an amply proportioned rack. Dean shrugged back her shoulders, giving her new additions the confidence they deserved. Cute mouth, but then it always was, arms a little thick and the hips a bit more generous, but hey, the charming crooked grin was the same, as were the pair of hazel green eyes that she didn't need to pretty up. Oh yeah. The male Dean Winchester would totally do herself. Himself. No, herself. Whatever.

Aesthetic appreciation aside, there was of course the little problem of her brother, Sam, who was never going to let Dean live this one down. It was best to call Castiel before arriving at the motel so he could fix the situation before Sam got wind of it. Dean didn't need jokes about cleavage every time they had to decapitate a vampire, or cracks about peach pie (which would be disgusting, and admittedly more Dean's own male mindset than Sammy's--Geez, was he really that much of a creeper?) or whatever other lame pun Sam would spit out for the rest of the apocalypse.

"Oh well," Dean thought, keeping her spirits positive "Maybe the world will end tomorrow."

A drunken pile of frat boys in a red convertable speeded past her. The red headed, pimply driver blew her a rushed kiss. "I'll be back for you in an hour, gorgeous!"

Yeah. World ending tomorrow. She was cool with that.

///

"Sam?"

It wasn't easy to mistake a member of the Winchester clan, no matter what package they came in. Still, the image of Dean as a cross between Gwen Stefani and Pink, minus the eyeliner and plus a brush-cut, wasn't an easy mental confrontation, let alone a physical one. Sam winced at Dean's high pitched guffaw, her ample hips shoving her younger sister out of the way as she slid the key into the door of their motel room. "Dudette, you are totally the poster child for Awkward Moment."

"I guess the spell got worked on you, too," Sam said.

"Gee, ya think?" Dean gave Sam's worried frown a snort of derision. "Don't worry about it. We'll get Cas to fix this."

They entered the motel room with mutual whistles of surprise. Instead of the usual dingy, grey stained walls and chipped porcielin showers, Castiel had brought them to a very clean, almost antiseptic, establishment that was enshrouded in sharp, brilliant whites, with just a touch of green in the kitchenette. The beds, in contrast, were draped in rich red silks, with ornate pillows of alternating whites and greens. At first the room reminded Sam of a pale attempt at a candy cane, only for a slow, unpleasant realisation to dawn on her.

It was Dean, however, who remarked on it first.

"Aw, crap," Dean said, letting her dusty duffle bag sully the white ceramic floor with a dull thud at her mud encrusted boots. "He bought the damn honeymoon suite!"

"Why would it have two double beds?" Sam asked. "Do they expect couples to wear one out?"

"Dammit! I told him I wasn't sharing!" Dean exclaimed. She kicked her dusty dufflebag in frustration and then flopped back onto one of the beds. "Man, this has got to be a Sealy. No springs poking through, nice contour on the spine. Smells like rose scented Febreeze." Her fists tightly clenched the red silk coverlet. "No way, Cas can sleep in the bathtub for all I care, he's not getting this one!"

"I expect that I have performed my required task correctly."

Castiel stepped into the motel room, the door closing on its own behind him with a soft click. Sam bit down on the urge to jibe him about holding onto that particular parlour trick, but seeing as how desperately they needed whatever else might be up the angel's sleeve, she wisely kept silent. "It's a great room," Sam said, instead.

"Yeah. Awesome. You done good." Dean hopped off the bed and bounded to where Castiel stood between herself and Sam. "Okay, I helped you with the human HoJo, now you can help us with some angel mojo." Dean gestured at her new shape. "Do your stuff and get us back to normal."

"It's probably nothing that complicated," Sam assured Cas. "We ate a couple of bad sandwiches earlier and..."

"Dude, they were egg salad. With mayo and a pickle. You didn't get a screaming case of salmonella induced hermaphroditism from a fucking sandwich."

"Josh was talking about buttless chickens, Dean, it's obvious it was the sandwiches!"

"Oh, so it's *my* fault you look like Nana Mouskuri. My mistake." Dean turned to Castiel, already tired of fighting. "Look, just change us back."

Castiel gave Sam and Dean a blank glare.

"I don't see the purpose in changing you...back."

Dean couldn't resist a wide grin at this. She nodded at her sister. "Heh. Yeah, I know, I'm totally smoking hot. Way more than Sammy." She bit down mischieveiously on her bottom lip. "As always."

"I don't know how you can be so comfortable with this," Sam said. "I'm feeling like an alien in my own skin and you...You have no trouble at all trading your boys for...for...You know..." She waved a helpless hand at Dean's upper torso. "*Boobies*."

"*Awesome* boobies," Dean reiterated.

"Just fix this," Sam pleaded at Castiel.

Castiel continued to give them both his now characteristic blank glare. "I don't understand what you want me to do," he said.

"You...Wow." Dean scratched the side of her head as she tried to puzzle this one out. "What's not to understand? We have a fatter chromosome that needs some trimming, you know what I mean?"

"Uh, Dean...Can I talk to you, privately, for a moment?" Sam gave Castiel a small smile as she steered her sister towards the sparkling white, slightly bleach scented bathroom. It was uncomfortably tiny, especially with Sam doing her best to keep her voice a low whisper. "I don't think he knows," she confided in her sister.

"Knows about what?"

"You know...Bird and bees and...stuff."

"Seriously? Oh get out, no way. Anna knew plenty, believe me."

"Anna was fallen and was actually born here as a human being, so she's not a good comparison." Sam's voice became harsh. "Dean, come on, Cas has never lived in a human host before, and maybe a good chunk of the details of our, you know, physical stuff are lost on him."

"He can't tell the difference between a girl and a boy? Give me a break, Sam. Just because he's an angel doesn't mean he's myopic."

"Chickens," Sam said.

"What?"

"Chickens, Dean," she repeated. "Do you know why Josh is getting good pay determining the sex of chicks, to the point that it's paying for his Masters degree? Because it's very, very hard for us human beings to tell what's a boy chicken and what's a girl chicken. But if you're a chicken..."

"You have no problem figuring out what side of the road you're on?"

"Exactly."

Dean wasn't entirely convinced. She cast a suspicious glance over her shoulder at Castiel, and with a bit more swagger to her hips than usual, she beckoned him closer. "Tell me, Cas," Dean said, her lips a sultry purr. "Do you notice anything, I don't know, different about me, lately?"

Castiel frowned. Then, he did something that neither Sam nor Dean expected him to do.

He reached deep into the pocket of his beige trenchcoat and pulled out the stack of index cards. He shuffled them for a long moment before finding the one he felt would suffice. Then, with an intense, highly aggressive glare he fixed Dean in his sights, his blue eyes holding her in place with their solemn, dominating assurance. Much as she didn't want it to, the scrutiny was making her weak kneed. Damn. So this is what divided hens and roosters, huh? Man, those lips, they looked a lot more edible than they had before. Damn, damn, damn. Sure, his mind said a weak little woah nellie, but *her* heart was hammering yes!yes!yes! When those lips started moving, it was all Dean could do to keep Cas from talking with one big, sloppy tongueful.

"Did you change your hair?" Castiel read.

"Give me those fucking cards," Dean said, furiously grabbing them out of the shocked angel's hand and ripping them to shreds. It didn't matter what side of the road this chick was on, oblique rejection was still rejection, and whatever Dean he or she was wasn't going to stand for it.

"I said something wrong," Castiel observed.

Dean showered him with tattered index cards. They fell like tainted white snow against the angel's head and shoulders.

"Ya think?" Dean said.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: three

Rating: PG-13 (for swearing, sexual talk)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel-ish, Bobby, girl!Sam

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke), it would hover somewhere in the middle of season five.

Summary: What happened in Vegas refused to stay there. There are consequences to every decision, to every destiny. The pattern is in the fallout.

a lingering fringe--chapter three

Sam watched as Castiel slowly peeled the soggy plastic wrap off of the burrito. The angel sniffed it cautiously and then, to Sam's unbearable disgust, actually took a generous bite out of it.

She punched her sister's shoulder. Hard. "Dean, you can't let him eat that. It's been sitting in the car in the hot Nevada sun for over ten hours. We're talking botulism, here."

"I don't care," Dean pouted. She leaned against the hood of the Impala, impassively watching as Castiel continued to devour what had to be by now moldy bean mush and fuzzy salsa. The hatchery loomed in the distance, its stench made all the more overpowering thanks to the baking quality of a high noon heat wave. Dean poked the toe of her ill fitting construction boots against the dirt, drawing alchemical lines.

"I don't get why it bothers you so much," Sam said.

Dean was suspicious as she glanced over her shoulder at Castiel, who was now contemplating whether or not he was supposed to eat the plastic wrapper the burrito came in. "I think he's faking."

"He's an angel, Dean. He doesn't know how to fake anything."

"Oh yeah?" Dean crossed her arms over her generous chest, only to find the constriction uncomfortable. She shoved her thumbs through the loops of her jeans instead, her curves accentuated by her slouched posture. "He keeps looking at me. You know. *That* way."

"He is not," Sam said.

"He is, Sammy. It's freaking me out."

Castiel wisely decided to discard the wrapper, wiping his palms against the pockets of his trenchcoat. He should have been boiling in the Nevada sun in that overly formal trenchcoat, suit and tie, but as all things human didn't quite add up with him, Castiel never broke into a sweat. He caught Sam's scrutiny and returned it with a level gaze that suggested he was searching for something deeper that had been hidden inside of Sam's soul. Or, more likely, to get the world he'd been thrust in into better focus.

"See?" Dean said, nodding at Castiel.

"He always stares like that," Sam said, shrugging. "You even wrote it on that card. His Angel Zombie Face."

"Yeah, well, now it's Creepy Stalker Angel Face and he so wants to jump this vessel's bones." Dean sucked back a tiny bead of sweat from her upper lip. "Where the hell is that snack truck? It was supposed to have showed up a half hour ago, at least that's what Josh told me when I called him last night."

Sam let out a small groan of dissent. "Honestly. You have such an ego. And so what if he is interested in you, it's not a big deal."

Dean snorted. "Right. I ain't walking the wild side, no way. No. I am so not there, buddy. Just because I got a great rack and am sporting a bit more estrogen doesn't make me Cas's babe bait. I don't care if he keeps looking at me with those bedroom eyes of his, I'm not biting!"

"Bedroom eyes? Dean, are you even listening to yourself?"

"Shut up."

"It's not a big deal," Sam repeated, more forcefully this time. "I mean, think about it. It only stands to reason that if you're a hot blooded heterosexual male, then the biochemistry is there to make you a hot to trot heterosexual *female*." Sam kicked up a layer of dirt with her too large sneaker, the cuffed black hem of her jeans now heavy with desert sand. "It is kind of weird, though. You being attracted to Cas."

"I am so going to kill you."

"I agree," Sam continued, perversely tempting fate. "With him on the road with us twenty-four seven, it does make things awkward. Especially since some rooms don't have fold-a-beds."

"I am not 'attracted' to Cas," Dean weakly muttered.

Still, Sam's words kept reverberating with alarming truth through Dean's skull, memories of porno flicks past mixed in with her newly acquired gender. While she really, really wanted the flashbacks of Debbie Does Dallas to secretly give herself a girl boner, the facts were that the classic just wasn't doing it. The mechanical motions of sex were just...boring. Even kind of icky. Damn. He really did get his balls chopped off.

Not that Castiel cared. Idiot. Look at him, standing there in profile in the sun, the Nevada desert cursing itself into dustbowls around him, lips pursed, shoulders back. Like some nuclear powered pillar of strength. Yeah, he'd been strong enough to drag Dean out of hell, his hot little hand still imprinted on her shoulder. Would never let her forget it, either, the dick. She imagined his skin was probably still warm, too. Hot, even. Nothing lukewarm about warrior angels, oh no, even if they were junkless.

'He's standing there, expecting me to treat him like he's God's gift, like I owe him some big favour, especially since we screwed up the Big Plan and left him homeless.'

Unbidden, a well of guilt rose within Dean, and she shoved it back with as much angry force as she could mentally muster. Just because he was Dean's salvation from Hell didn't mean Dean was supposed to ignore the fact that even a fired angel could have enough arrogance inside of him to need pulling down a peg or two. The angel turned his head, locking Dean in his gaze and there was nothing Dean wanted to do more in that furious moment than to grab Cas, throw him on the hood of the Impala and rip that sanctimonious buttoned down shirt open and...

"Oh fuck me, I need a lobotomy," Dean groaned, and sank her reddened face in her hands.

///

Dean furiously punched the red pillow now lying at her side. "That is NOT what I was thinking!" She sat up and crossed her arms haughtily, her teeth clenched in barely contained rage. "You got a lot of nerve saying that crap, Sam, especially after what happened next."

There was an uncomfortable silence between Castiel and Bobby, who were currently tip-toe-ing around each other in unspoken accusation and denial. Castiel dared to sit beside Dean, a dangerous, precarious perch should either Bobby or Dean come right out and ask what, exactly, were angelic intentions in regards to certain human, biological and endochrionic situations.

"You are not talking about Paul," Sam firmly stated. "I told you he has nothing to do with this."

"Paul?" Bobby asked, raising a brow. God help him, this room was turning into one hell of a Dr. Phil show.

"He's just a guy..."

"He's a demon," Dean snapped. "A bald, sweaty ugly bastard of a demon who's got a hard on for Sam the size of a forty car freight train."

"He's not an ugly, sweaty demon, Dean, he's a normal, highly intelligent, empathetic human being." Sam bit down on her words as though grinding hot charcoal. "Besides, you were the one who insisted I go on a date with him. Not me."

"Whoa, there, back up girls," Bobby said, his brain doing a sudden reset. "Sam, if I heard right, you went on a *date*?"

"Let me tell this story," Dean angrily asserted. She sat on the edge of the bed, her thigh touching Castiel's with an undeniable intimacy, the angel hungrily succumbing to it as he leaned against her. Bobby tried to concentrate on what Dean was saying, but all the cries of 'God no!' in his subconscious left the information she was relating muddled. He shook his head, averting his gaze, keeping it strictly floor bound. Poor John Winchester. As if suffering in hell for over a hundred years wasn't enough.

"...and then Sam says, 'Hey, I know that guy.'"

///

"Hey. I know that guy."

The small, black convertible eased onto the hatchery property entrance, cutting in front of the Impala as it parked. He was an imposing figure as he got out, a strong, clean physique marred by the cigarette dangling from between his firm lips. He cupped his hand around its tip and lit it before approaching the Impala.

"I thought you were going to the observatory," Sam said.

The stranger paused, shaking his match free of flame before tossing it on the dusty earth before him. "How the hell do you know that?" he asked.

"Uh..."

"You look awfully familiar," the stranger added. He stepped closer, his fierce blue eyes softening from suspicion into recognition. "Man, that is weird. I bet you're his twin sister, aren't you? I can see the resemblance so clear, you can't be anyone else. Tell your brother I appreciate his warning about the Madonna Inn. The place was real crawly, he wasn't exaggerating. I don't think I caught his name, come to think of it."

"I'm Sam," she quickly said, only to realise her mistake too late. "Uh...That was...Um... Simon, who you met."

"Lucky Simon," Dean tersely said. Then, sweetly grinning. "We haven't met yet, though."

"This is Deanna, my sister," Sam said, and Dean gave Sam a rough, painful kick in the shin. Sam gestured to Castiel who was still inspecting the fascinating qualities of the desert compressed into the delicate microcosm of a healthy cactus plant. "And that's our cousin. Cas." Then, as Castiel's odd overly intense inspection of the cactus at his feet had him crawling on all fours towards it, Sam felt the need to add: "He's kind of eccentric. You know. Autism. Brain tumour. Maybe even some tourrettes. Side of schizophrenia." Castiel was now testing the points of the cactus with his fingertips, and wincing when they nearly drew blood. "Main dish of bi-polar?"

"Poor guy," was the concerned reply. He gave them all a warm smile that instantly melted any lingering tension--at least on Sam's part. He held out his hand, and Sam took it almost too eagerly. "My name's Paul. Paul Nash. Nice to meet you all." He shyly cocked his head to one side, the back of his thick neck slightly reddened. "I guess I made quite the impression on your brother. Tell him sorry about that, too. Sometimes, I get so caught up in my own headspace I end up saying things that don't make much sense." He watched as Castiel stood up, his palms littered with splinters from the cactus. "Does he take medication?"

"So what are you doing out here?" Dean asked, skirting Paul's question. "Stopping by to pick up some eggs to make more sisterhood sandwiches?"

"I was hoping to ask for directions," Paul said. He turned his head, eyeing the hatchery, the hint of a black tattoo peeking out from beneath the neck of his dark grey t-shirt. He unfolded a map he'd had in his back jeans pocket. "I'm looking for the observatory, but I guess I went down the wrong road."

"It's about a mile back," Sam helpfully said.

"You sure as hell did go down a wrong road," Dean added. To Sam's horror her sister hand her hand on the hilt of a demon knife, ready to use it at a second's notice.

"Stop it, he's *human*," Sam mouthed when Paul wasn't looking.

"Yeah. Just like Adam was." Dean wasn't going to wait this time. Paul had his back to her, his map splayed wide on the trunk of the covertible. Dean held the knife high, ready to sink it full force between the folds of demonized flesh.

"Dean, stop!"

A sudden dust cloud erupted over them, obscuring Dean's view, her eyes smarting as sand whipped against them. She dropped the demon knife, pausing for one second to wipe the crud from her eyes before dropping to her knees, searching blindly for her weapon. Paul waved the dust out of his way, and managed to utter "Jackass!" as he coughed through his fist.

The speeding snack truck ground to a halt not twenty feet away. When the dust finally began to settle, it was Castiel who stood impassive and unaffected, his splintered hands in his trenchcoat pocket, his gaze unblinking as he took in the truck's owner.

"We have our target," Castiel blandly informed them.

Sam turned to rescue Paul from Dean's mistaken ire, but his human acquaintance had already folded up his map and left, his exit so quiet it was as though he'd never truly been among them.

For a brief second, Sam wondered if Dean had been correct in her assumption Paul was a demon, only to discard the worry almost immediately. Paul was in Vegas dabbling with an astronomy lesson, and as far as Sam knew she'd never seen any connection between hard science and necromancy. With the seals broken and Lucifer freed, the demons had no interest in the formations of the world they were set to destroy.

Ruby had certainly never entertained thoughts beyond her assignment. From Sam's extensive experience, all demons were solely interested in mind games and physical torture against each other and humans. This world and all the fascinating things within it held no value to them. Not for demons were the overwhelming significance of vast bodies of light and mass swirling outside of this galaxy and its mind boggling complexity. These kinds of explorations weren't part of the demon mindset.

A strange note of hope rang through Sam's demon tainted soul. The fact that science could still hold a fascination for her suggested the ratio of demon versus humanity within her was significantly in favour of the latter.

Sam felt weak-kneed with relief. Like being told her type of cancer was in remission.

"Thanks, Paul," Sam whispered to herself.

"Sam, back me up!"

Dean was already brandishing her knife as she approached the snack truck, her steps heavy as she stomped her way with ill-fitting construction boots that were like clown shoes compared to her smaller frame. Without waiting for confirmation, she made her move and violently slashed the air, the knife cutting through the slowly settling dust in a wide arc.

Its sharp tip would have plunged through the heart of the demon, but a barrier of its own power prevented it. The elderly man whose body the demon inhabited gave them a wry, knowing grin. "Sorry, girls. Tricksters trump toys. You'll have to do better than that."

"I should have known it was you," Dean said, fighting to keep her knife poised at the creature's throat. The host's eyes went black, the elderly man's skin pulling taut into a far more familiar shape. The Trickster let out a low laugh at Dean and Sam's predicament, a mirth that was not shared.

"My, my, look at you. Dean Winchester, you are one hot number, I have to say. Love the blonde brush cut--very Wendy O. chic. If I had my chance, I would *so* tap that."

"The only tapping you're going to be doing is the one on your custom built torture slab when I send you back to Hell." Dean tried to push the tip of the knife through the barrier, but it stubbornly remained blocked, tiny slivers of silver wearing from its edges.

The trickster demon gave her a mischievious shrug. "I don't know what you think you're going to accomplish, what with a fallen angel on your side. By the way, Dean, Sam's right. He's not faking. My suggestion is you make like Eve and give him an apple. You'll be shocked at how quick he'll be into you."

Dean lunged at the trickster, only to be hammered back by the strange barrier that had been erected between them. She felt around it, a wall of grainy, translucent sand keeping them separated.

"Look, girls--I feel so weird, saying that. Just wait till the gang hears about this!--the point is, I'm not your enemy. I like you both, you know that. I'm the only demon out here that's ever concentrated on your well being. After all, I tried to warn you, Sam. I told you attempting to rescue your brother from Hell was going to open up a whole can of worms, the whole 'everyone dies' scenario, but oh no, once Sam Winchester goes on a fool's errand he has to make sure he has an idiot's outcome." The demon's black eyes flashed. "Of course, that was the bond of brothers, blinding you with loyalty and self sacrifice. I have to wonder if being sisters makes any difference. Sure, brothers argue all the time, but human women can be so bitchy." He smiled and cocked his head to one side as he regarded Sam. "Who was that strange man who was just here? Another one of Sam's, shall we say, bad choices in relationships?"

"I knew it," Dean growled. "I told you he was a demon!"

"He doesn't know who Paul is, so there's no way Paul can be a demon. Use some common sense, Dean."

"See what I mean?" the trickster tutted. "Bitchy."

Sam paced in front of Castiel, the tense standoff putting her own reflexes on high alert. "Did you get any angel vibes off of him? Was he telling the truth about visiting the observatory?"

Castiel sighed in long suffering impatience. "The human who referred to himself as Paul is no angel. I am inclined to agree with you, Sam. There was nothing of interest in him." He stared blankly at the trickster demon, who shrank from the angel's ire in disgust. "You are aware of who I am. You understand that you do not have the power to resist me, regardless of my current post." Castiel pointed two cactus splintered fingers at his target, his voice firm. "I command you to release Sam and Dean Winchester from the bonds of your demonic influence."

They waited for a flash of light. The scream of a demon being sent back to the darkest, most remote corner of Hell, never to return. They waited to become, once again, the Sam and Dean that Heaven, Hell and Fangirls persued without mercy, the ones with penises and pockets full of rocksalt. When Dean got up tomorrow, he'd jump into a pair of tight jeans and adjust them accordingly. Hal-le-fuck-ing-lu-jah.

Nothing happened.

The trickster openly laughed at Castiel's seeming failure. "You think *I* did this? Much as it pains my ego, I have to admit I'm not that powerful." He gave Dean a smirking wink. "Don't look at me like that, gorgeous. I only wish I could take the credit. You're going to have to look elsewhere, and when you do find the one responsible, be sure to give him a very hearty thank you from me." He licked his lips as he gave Dean's new form a good once over. "He's given me lots of very naughty, but creative, thoughts. You know, if you ever get curious and want to act on any of them, I just want to let you know--I'm game."

"Sonofabitch!"

The barrier weakened, and Dean lunged, only to be striking air. Tiny sharp pieces of sand cut into her arms as she shielded her face. The snack truck and its demon rider rode upon the dust of the Nevada desert, searching the wind for another place to work his sick brand of mischief. Dean stabbed the ground in frustration before stomping towards the Impala, the knife tucked into the back of her jeans.

"I hate that guy!" Dean shouted.

///

"So, the trickster was a no go. I have to say, that does surprise me. The last time you two were so hormonal I could see the haze of a trickster trap a mile away." Bobby took off his cap and wiped his sweating brow with the back of his hand. "How sure are you he wasn't just lying"

"I commanded him to release his influence, and he could not," Castiel informed him. "There is no way he could have resisted the request otherwise."

Bobby took a quick mental review of the situation, his keen hunting instincts taking him well in the same direction Dean had originally suspected. "In this whole story, there's been two characters who are recurring. This Paul fella, and some creepy rocker dude with a mohawk."

"That's Kelvin," Dean said, dismissing Bobby's concern. "He's just a human goofball loser, totally harmless."

"You girls seem to be real social butterflies here in Vegas," Bobby observed, though he couldn't help but slightly wince at the use of the word 'girls' in reference to Sam and Dean. "Seem to be making plenty of new friends."

"He's Paul's friend," Sam explained. "Associate, sort of. He used to be in this band with Kelvin, a long time ago." She pushed up from her chair and walked into the kitchenette, snatching a small flyer affixed to the fridge with a NASA magnet to hand the paper to Bobby. He read it over, taking in the bad black and white photoshop treatment and the overblown punk aesthetic so keenly popular with the 'out' crowd back in 1983.

"This Kelvin dude's got himself a couple of safety pin earrings. Sure does look authentic, but then, the punk scene wasn't never my thing." Bobby scratched the underside of his chin. "I've always been a bit of an Andrew Lloyd Webber guy, myself."

"We checked him out, he's another normal, ordinary human being," Sam said. Her hands were on her slim hips, bottom lip still cutely bitten in thought. "Don't listen to Dean, Kelvin's not a loser, despite what he looks like. Paul says he studied harmonics at Julliard."

"Well, this Paul is becoming quite the common denominator," Bobby said. He wasn't sure he liked where that track was heading. Without even having to ask, Sam opened the fridge and tossed him another beer. He sure was thankful for it, considering how stressful the moment was, what with the way Castiel was remaining so close to Dean on the edge of that bed, and kind of whispering in her ear, and Dean smiling and downright grinny over whatever was said...Shit. He needed something way stronger than a few sips of Budweiser to get through the rest of this night.

"You seem awfully keen to keep this Paul guy off the hook, Sam," Bobby said. "Seems to me you ought to start looking at him real close." He pried his thumb around the tab of the beer, moving it back and forth until it snapped off, leaving a sharp edge of aluminum in its wake. "I hate to say it, but that demon had a point. Your relationships haven't exactly been functional."

"Don't worry, I checked him out. I mean, we had to when we got back to Vegas." Sam wouldn't meet Bobby's questioning squint. "It was just so weird, seeing him at the bar that same evening. Then he ends up being the in the room right across from this one."

"Curiouser and curiouser," Bobby said. He took a strong sip of Bud to brace himself. "Tell me all about this Paul Nash. If it ends as a bedtime story, I'll kill him myself, demon or no demon."

Sam slightly blushed at this. "I keep telling you," she insisted. "He's just a really nice guy."

///

Dean was wearing a tight white tank top, cargo pants and a pair of dollar store flip flops she's purchased earlier that evening. The casual ensemble wasn't winning her any points at the bar, which had a strict dress code after nine p.m. The branding of Castiel's hand on her shoulder sent all kinds of too-much-to-handle vibes through the fairly conservative crowd at this place. The lithe, sultry redhead tending bar slammed Dean's whiskey sour before her with enough force to spill half of it.

"I don't know if you noticed, but my bar caters to a very high class of people," the bartender said. She shook her mane of red hair back, revealing a long, slender neck and a diamond necklace that should have cost her a year's wages. Except, the always observant Dean Winchester noted, they weren't real diamonds, they were cubic zirconium. Fake and sparkling. Just like the rest of this cursed town.

"High class," Dean snorted in unladylike derision. She downed what was left of her whiskey sour in one gulp and made a motion to order another.

"I don't think you get it," the bartender curtly replied. She nodded at Sam, who had been nursing a rum and coke for the past half hour. "The men who come here, they are looking for beautiful, classy, well groomed women. Not scarecrows and chubby lesbians."

"I'm not chubby," Dean protested.

Her drink was roughly pushed towards her. "Last one, and only because I feel sorry for you. Prison is a hard place for anyone, but especially tough girl acts like you. Don't look surprised, I can spot a fellow caged crow a mile away. I was one myself a decade or so ago. So drink up, bitch, and then get the hell out of my bar."

Dean frowned as she took a few gulps of her drink. Had the tables been properly turned, and Dean had shown up here in a pressed Fed suit and tie, the she was sure Red would have been clamouring all over him. Hell, he might have even taken her up on the offer to visit her office later that night, like she'd mentioned to the monkey suited jerk sitting two stools over. No matter. This sisterhood of loose baggy pants wasn't interested in anything the slut had to offer anyway. Unless it was another whiskey sour that was heavy on being unforgivingly tart and rimmed with salty bitterness.

"It's not going to bite you," Dean said to Sam, who was now twirling her drink with a pink swizzle stick.

"I'm worried," Sam said. "The trickster demon said something much more powerful than him had done this to us. What if we get it wrong, Dean? What if we can't handle this?"

"You died once. I went to Hell. We both kick-started the Apocalypse. Lucifer is free to roam the Earth, to pick up donuts at iHop for all his evil minions. What else can possibly go wrong?" Dean took another gulp of her whiskey sour. "Woah, that packs a punch. All this time I thought girlie drinks were for wusses. Hit me with another, Red!"

"I told you. Get your skanky fat butt away from my bar!"

"Yeah, well hold onto your panties, whorehound, I'm *paying* for these drinks!"

"Dean." Sam shoved her sister's shoulder, fingers pointing frantically towards the bar's entrance. "Is that who I think it is?"

There are many things that can get Dean Winchester's hackles up, and way up on that list is a phenomenon known as coincidence. Dean knew better than anyone that, like miracles, coincidence simply didn't exist.

Paul Nash, cleaned and pressed in a white shirt, black suit jacket and jeans looked the picture of a guy trying too hard to be casual. He was awkward and out of his element, his shy smiles and nods to people who turned away from him betraying his out of towner status. He chatted for a few moments with a girl carrying two guitars in her hand, and she seemed to be indicating that he'd come through the wrong entrance. He was ready to leave, until he caught Sam's eye.

"Hold onto him, Sammy," Dean said. "I'm getting sick of seeing this guy. He might not be a demon, but he's connected somehow."

"What do you want me to do?" Sam asked. Sam suddenly turned away, her rum and coke downed in two gulps. "Shit, he's coming over here!"

"He seems to really like you," Dean said, ignoring Sam's rolling eyes. "I say you should get to know him better. As in, every little thing you can find out. Put those research skills of yours out into some field work."

"I can't do this!" Sam said through clenched teeth. "What if he, you know...Wants more than I'm willing to give?"

Dean was momentarily taken aback by this. "You do what every chick does," Dean said. "You smash his kneecaps with a steel pipe, and you move on."

"Dean..."

"Research, Sam," Dean sternly said. She tossed a fifty on the bar, which was snatched up by a redheaded cougar's claw. "By any means necessary."

Ignoring the barbs stabbing deep into her back, Dean slid off of her stool, much to the bartender's relief. As she left her sister behind, a small part of her was worried about how Sam's evening was going to go. But a larger part had long since stopped caring about how Sam spent every waking moment. If there was a mistake to be made, it was up to Sam to make sure it didn't happen. Dean was through with being her babysitter.


	4. Chapter 4

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: four

Rating: PG-13 (for swearing, sexual talk)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke), it would hover somewhere in the middle of season five.

Summary: What happened in Vegas refused to stay there. There are consequences to every decision, to every destiny. The pattern is in the fallout.

a lingering fringe--chapter four

The whiskey sours hadn't quite left her system, and she'd had a hell of a time getting the key into the lock. The squeaky clean motel room swallowed her up, and she couldn't help but enjoy the false sense of security a well made room gave her. So far, she'd been turned into a woman, fought off the trickster demon and been kicked out of a bar. It ended spectacularly with leaving Sam behind to hold her own with her new interesting friend Paul.

Whether Paul Nash was a demon or not no longer held any interest for Dean. Right now, all she wanted to do was kick off her sandals, flop onto that heaven sent mattress and descend into a deep, preferably dreamless, sleep. The last thing she needed was some nosy angel jackass getting a good look at her newly feminized subconscious. It was bad enough that Chuck was no doubt having the laugh of his life and inciting the fury of a hundred Sam and Dean girls. Or maybe not, it was hard to tell. Maybe they'd get even more rocks off, imagining Sam doing lesbo things to Dean and vice versa. Yuck. She even felt gross over renting 'Sister Sluts Do Salt City' last weekend when she was still male. Double standard yuck. Granted, with Cas now in the picture, they would probably have Dean's own personal angel do them both. At once. With Chuck watching, totally unable to participate in a sweaty angels and demonically influenced orgy.

Man, that would be so hot.

Sigh. Chuck really had to learn the concept of killing the author.

"Scribble it all down, Chuck," Dean sneered. "When you get back to writing after that cold shower, stop describing my girls as 'heaving breasts'. Words like achy and sore are more accurate."

Dean was starting to understand the down side of more than a handful. The sports bra she pilfered from the motel laundry room was at least two sizes too small, but there was no way she could spend another back breaking minute hauling those boulders around without some support. Going au naturel had become damned painful.

There was a flurry of wings, and Castiel appeared at the foot of the bed, his palms itching and red from his encounter with the cactus earlier in the day. "I have returned from my attempt to contact someone who may have the power to help you. The risk of exposure was clearly too great. My request was refused."

"I'm not exactly on the Heavenly Christmas list," Dean reminded him.

Castiel turned, his face a perturbed profile in the half light of the room. The neon motel sign flickered blue, sending waves not unlike ripples of water across the white walls and furnishings. The beds, with their red silk coverlets were large stains of blood in a chlorinated swimming pool. "Where is Sam?" he asked.

"Hanging out with a new friend," Dean said.

"I trust this friend's name is Paul."

"How did you guess?" Dean replied.

Castiel's voice was even. "The attraction was evident."

Now that was just plain frustrating. Sure, she counted Castiel as a friend. He was a good enough guy, for an angel, and damned awesome to have on your side in a fight. He'd been dicked around by his superiours, too, and he'd opted for the side of humanity, for the most part. He'd been smashed to bits and put back together, and when he was whole again the first person he ran to was Dean Winchester. This kind of loyalty, however, wasn't enough to quell the feeling deep within Dean's breast that it would be great, no, *awesome*, to wrap her hands around his neck and squeeze, very, very tightly.

"You could see an attraction but you couldn't tell we'd become chicks without dicks. How is that even possible, Cas?"

"I don't understand what you mean," Castiel replied.

Dean's urge to strangle him increased exponentially. "You know, I get it. Biology wasn't your strongest subject in class. But if you expect me to believe that you can understand a mutual, sexual attraction between a male and female and yet can't differentiate between the two genders, then I'm sorry Cas, I'm not buying it." She picked at a silk thread, winding it tightly around her index finger until the fleshy tip was bone white. "If demons don't have any trouble using sex as a weapon against us, I can't see how you can be ignorant of it."

"I see," Castiel said, the tension in his posture relaxing as understanding came into clarity. "This is about the relationship between Sam and Ruby."

Dean's urge to strangle Castiel suddenly deflated, leaving her utterly alone with her thoughts. "No, it isn't," Dean said, but she was lying, and from the sidelong glare Castiel gave her he knew she was. Of course it was about Sam and Ruby, all things awful reverberated back to their unholy union. It didn't matter that Dean had started the apocalypse, that he was tortured past the brink of madness and broke into a million pieces as a result. Sam had finished what Dean started, thanks to a different kind of a torture, one that had a vicious slow burn and bit deep into a person's sense of self. The only difference was that Sam had Dean, a brother who had suffered in his place, who'd given him plenty of warning that the path he was treading was all kinds of wrong.

"He took that bitch's word over mine," Dean said.

"This anger you are harbouring for Sam is not going to mend your feelings of betrayal." Castiel bent his fingers, wincing as he watched the red sores on his palms grate on each other. "The outcome of Sam's arrogance is suitable punishment enough. Do not underestimate the crushing blows that can be dealt from guilt alone." Castiel cast a stern eye on Dean. "It is important to forgive."

"Tell me something," Dean said, her voice caustic. "When you think about how your angel buddies abandoned you and humanity for their Greater Good, do you feel forgiving? Do you have warm fuzzy feelings and hope you can get back to that place where you and the gang all used to drink wine around the BBQ and think up ways to piss off your Dad? Fun times in the trenches, right Cas? Fun fucking times."

"It is difficult for me to express to you my thoughts, my...feelings...on the matter, as I have never needed to explore them before. I can only question, over and over in my thoughts, why they would harbour such resentment against this world when it is such a rich example of our Father's art."

A wave of hurt seemed to eminate from Castiel, making Dean feel like a douche for opening the angel's inner wounds wide and spitting salt into them. "Look, Cas, I'm sorry."

"Dean, should one of my brethren seek forgiveness of me, I would gladly give it, I would welcome them in my quest. But they are proud, and they will not." Castiel clenched his fists tight, hissing over the physical pain it caused. "I do not understand this need to constantly brood over that which you have no control. Either you forgive, or you don't. I don't understand the conflict."

Dean couldn't answer him. It would have been easy to say how right it felt to stay angry instead, but that wasn't the emotion that was coursing through Dean's veins, hotly pushing her sister away and into possible danger. All the pent up rages, the sorrow, the never-ending trials and suffering had finally taken their toll on Dean's usually passionate heart. When it came to Sam, there was this insurmountable wall of indifference that had wedged itself between them. Forgiveness was always there, the fact Sam was even with them was testament to that, but there were more complicated strings attached that Castiel, in his simplistic view of the universe, couldn't comprehend.

"Let me see your hands," Dean said.

Castiel obliged, revealing the angry red welts that littered his palms caused by dozens of tiny cactus splinters. Dean grabbed the med kit out of her duffel bag and began teasing some of them out with a safety pin doused in rubbing alcohol. She held tight onto Castiel's hand when he tried to pull away from the antiseptic's sting.

"This is what happens when you hug a cactus," Dean informed him.

"I couldn't resist it," Castiel admitted. "I was compelled to explore every facet of its construction."

Dean pulled a tiny splinter out of Castiel's fingertip. Its release seeped blood. "So, is this an experiment you're going to perform again? Are you going to wrap your hands tight around another spikey flower just to know what it feels like?"

"No," Castiel admitted.

Dean wrapped the angel's palms with sterile gauze, her touch unexpectedly tender.

"Now you know how I feel," Dean said.

///

Sam avoided Bobby's scrutiny, her own layer of guilty hurt imploding in silent brooding within the motel room. She brushed away the beginning of tears with her fingertips, refusing to look at her sister, concentrating instead on her laptop, sliding it open and hitting the power button with a fingerstab.

Dean sighed, her chin perched on Castiel's shoulder as she looked behind him at Sam's misery. "Sam, I'm sorry."

"What do you need to be sorry about?" Sam asked, her voice choking as she tried to hold back her tears. Google bleeped into life, and she pretended to type something into the massive search engine. "You're right. I'm a cactus."

"No you're not."

"I am. Euphorbia lactea. That's me."

"Aw, Sam, come on, it's not like that." Dean responded to her sister's barely controlled sniffling by grabbing one of the small dinette chairs and pulling it close beside her. "We've been through this. I already told you before, I don't hate you for anything that happened. I just..."

"I wish it was like it was before," Sam said, choking back tears. "I wish we were as close, that the bond we had wasn't shattered like it was. By me. I know, Dean, it's all my fault. I was stupid and I should have listened and I should have been more supportive. Now everything's gone to hell, and you won't even watch my back."

"That isn't true," Dean sternly said. "Don't you ever believe that's true!" The tiny metal wheels on the steel chair grated against the white ceramic tile as Dean leaned closer, in confidence with her sister. "People make mistakes, and yeah, you made more than your fair share. But I'm not holding it against you. I'm just more aware of it, that's all. That you and me, we aren't perfect. That we don't always know the right thing to do." Dean handed Sam a tissue, which she used to fiercely wipe her eyes and nose.

"It can't be like before," Dean quietly told her sister. "You're my blood, Sam, and you will always be a big part of who I am, but you're not my entirety. We're not a couple of co-dependent whiners. I had a whole, horrible life away from you for a long time, and you had a horrible pile of shit life away from me, but maybe that wasn't so bad a thing. Maybe, Sam, it's about time you and I got to grow apart a little and become who we are seperately supposed to be."

"I just want to be able to be honest with you," Sam said, lower lip quivering.

Dean sighed, and grabbed her sister's shoulder, anchoring Sam's attention. "I know," she said.

"Wow," Bobby said, blinking back his own tears of pain, though they were perhaps more corrosive than supportive. "I haven't had to endure this kind of chick flick crap since my cable got screwed and only aired the Women's Network. It was running complete first season of Gilmore Girls at the time. Worst ten hours I ever spent alone." He belched into his fist as he stood up. "You ladies will have to excuse me. I gotta go to the can and have some 'me' time as I metabolise some fried green tomatoes."

Dean was shocked by Bobby's seeming heartlessness. "There is nothing wrong with expressing feelings."

Bobby winced at this as he looked at the former Winchester males. "Oh yeah, there is."

He left Dean to puzzle over this as he stepped into the bathroom. Bobby closed the door and splashed his face with cold water, a vain effort to clear out the heebie jeebies that kept crawling under his skin. Sure, it was a hell of a double standard, but Bobby couldn't shake the feeling that Sam and Dean needed someone watching out for them, especially when it came to the sticky situation of the males of the species. Dean never should have let Sam head off alone with that stranger, especially since she'd already expressed she was uneasy. Of all people, Dean should have been the first one to understand that men were pigs.

'Course, a certain curious angel wasn't exactly leading the path of righteousness, either. Bobby opened the door a tiny sliver and peeked out, noting well that Dean was again on the edge of the bed with Castiel, the angel's right hand very lightly caressing the small of Dean's back.

"Innocence, my ass," Bobby growled.

"I wonder if Rory ever did make it into Harvard," Sam thoughtfully mused as Bobby returned.

"I want to know everything about this damned Paul," Bobby spat. He walked to the mini-fridge and took out another beer, foam spilling over the side of the can as he messily sipped from it. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, fixing a good glare on Castiel, who was wisely keeping his hands in his lap with Bobby present. "Start from the top and don't leave anything out."

"There's no point talking about Paul," Dean said, her voice more curt than Bobby would have liked. "I think I got a good lead on who our demon tranny might be."

Dean hit the power button on the television remote, bringing the somewhat greenish toned vintage porno playing on it into life. "I noticed it last night," Dean said, in earnest. "Blink your eyes and you'll miss it."

"Is this what you were talking about before?" Sam asked. A sudden gasp of understanding left her. "So that other stuff between you and Cas didn't happen?"

Bobby really didn't want this to go further, but seeing as how he'd already got his hackles up, he couldn't exactly let the point go. "What other stuff?"

"It's nothing," Dean quickly said. She inched a tiny bit from Castiel, their thighs no longer touching.

"Then you won't mind telling me," Bobby sternly said.

"It was hormones," Dean said, clearly uncomfortable with the subject if her bouncing knee and shifting eyes were any indication. "Raging, rabid hormones!"

"I don't care if it was Lucifer's doing himself." Bobby wasn't taking any more of the vague double speak, or Castiel's whole holy host act. There were some serious issues afoot here. "Out with it!" he demanded.

"Fine," Dean weakly replied. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

///

Sure, it was a Sealy, a damn fine, comfortable mattress, but no amount of hugging foam and quilted softness was going to halt the loud cacophony of wheezing erupting out of Castiel's windpipe. Clearly, Cas was trying to get a handle on some of the more physical aspects of his current incarnation, his experiment in sleeping one of the most frustrating. There was a choked gurgling sound, and Dean kicked Castiel's side, trying to force him awake. Instead, he rolled over, eyes wide open, a goofy grin plastered on his face. With his pillow tucked tightly beneath his ear, he dared to snuggle closer to Dean, his fingers tight on the red silk pillowcase as though fearful they might do some travelling on uncharted Planet Dean territory.

It took Dean a few moments to realise this ogling scrutiny wasn't coming from an angel. "Jimmy?" Dean dared to ask.

"Back in the flesh," Jimmy said, giving Dean another goofier grin. "Oh, don't worry, he's still in here. I gotta tell you, I love the whole nap idea. It's great being able to pop out every now and again while he catches ten."

"And how often has that been?" Dean guardedly asked.

"Often enough," Jimmy replied. He sighed, dreamily. "Wow. You have no idea how amazing these last forty-eight hours have been for me, all thanks to you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I've never fought so hard to be conscious in all my life. Even before I had to share the rental." Jimmy guiltily looked away from Dean's shocked expression. "You don't have to say it. I mean, I'm still a married man, technically. Or not. Depends on your perspective. I mean, as far as my life here on Earth goes, I'm also a dead man, so I've left my wife a widow. Sort of. If she remarries, I'm even okay with that. Really. As long as she's happy." Jimmy gave Dean's stoic understanding an awkward shrug. "Yeah, I know, there's this whole justification thing going on in my head right now. I never thought there'd be options, not since I've become an angel condom..."

"My line," Dean reminded him.

"Sorry," Jimmy stammered. "I'm just...I haven't been paying much attention lately, which I admit is laziness on my part. I mean, I was getting ready to just kind of snooze away the apocalypse. Seemed the right thing to do, you can't live on an adrenaline rush twenty-four seven. But seeing what happened with Sam and...and with you. Whoa. It hasn't been too easy for me to go on the sidelines. You gotta understand, it's been a long time since I enjoyed a woman's...company. I mean we're talking a couple of years now and angels aren't exactly the type to kiss on the first date."

"Goes to show what you know," Dean sardonically replied. She rolled onto her back and turned on the TV. The grainy remnants of some ancient seventies porno moaned into the room. She adjusted her pillow, an irritating ache in her lower back.

"It's been kind of all push me and pull me in the whole temptation department, and I'm trying really, really hard to keep my thoughts pure, but it's been difficult." He made a face that didn't quite go with his amourous intentions. "My stomach hurts."

"Bad burrito," Dean explained. She turned up the volume on the TV. The moaning was drowned out by the wonka-wonka music playing in the background, and the sex scene had segued into a tiny shot of wooden dialogue between a plumber and a hot blonde housewife who were clearly about to have sex at any moment. Probably in the sink.

"It's been frustrating for me, because as you've noticed, Castiel's not exactly observant about certain human needs. I tried to explain it to him, and when that didn't work I thought he'd figure it out, what with how often I kept imagining you, and me, and, well...It. But no, the information is just, kind of, lost on him." Jimmy cleared his throat, his face pained. "Bad burrito, huh?"

"You've been thinking about me?" Dean said, suddenly incensed. "*That* way?"

"I'm sorry," Jimmy said, genuinely apologetic. "But I couldn't help it! You look...Dean come on, you look..."

"Awesome," Dean said, brows raised as she stated the obvious.

"Better than awesome. You are H. O. T. In all caps." Jimmy closed his eyes in bliss and dared to tease Dean's bra strap between his fingers. "When I was fifteen, I used to dream about girls like you. A lot. Usually during Bible class, while sneaking peeks at the Songs of Solomon." He thumb brushed lower. "Then, when I got home, I'd steal my mom's Vogue magazines and hide in the bathroom for an hour and...you know. My dad caught me taking one once, but I never told him why. It caused a bit of an awkwardness between us."

His hand was slapped away, hard enough to leave a red mark on his knuckles.

"You've been horn-dogging me since this happened?" Dean exclaimed. Then, in more confusion than disgust. "Cas still doesn't get it?"

"Believe me, I gave him plenty of visuals," Jimmy assured her.

"Oh my God, you creeper freak!"

She shoved him off the bed and onto the floor, his shock at her fury tempered by a surprising amount of strength. She jumped on top of him, straddling Jimmy's waist as she clutched his halfway unbuttoned shirt into tight fists. "I am so going to beat the crap out of you!"

"This isn't my fault!" Jimmy pleaded. "I can't help it!"

Dean hauled him up off the floor and slammed him against the wall next to the bed. Her lips were inches from his nose, her voice a deep growl. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't pound you into oblivion."

Jimmy's breaths were hollow, his brow damp with sweat. "I am so turned on right now," he confessed.

"I know," Dean said, her hand wrapped tight around Jimmy's neck in a choke hold, her breath gasping with adrenaline. "Me too. It's fucking weird."

"Not really," Jimmy tried to cheerfully interject. "It's been pretty clear for the last little while that we've got...we got..." He frantically waved his fingers back and forth between them. "Chemistry."

Dean pinned Jimmy's shoulders against the wall. "Stop talking," she commanded. If that didn't press the point enough, she cemented her hips against his, a thrill coursing through her at the evidence that Jimmy wasn't dead yet. His desire translated into hers, the control she had over him with every tiny movement she made filling her with an overwhelming sense of power. She could take whatever she wanted and he'd be grateful for it. He'd even beg for more later.

She pressed the bone of her hip hard against his groin, the tiny sigh he surrendered giving her one hell of a rush.

"Dean?"

She was drunk with want, only barely registering that it was no longer Jimmy who was staring back at her, but Castiel, awoken rather roughly from his little nap. No matter. She pulled his shirt open, buttons flying onto the red silk coverlets, scattering like tiny clear coins that were lost in the red shag rug at their feet. She lightly bit Castiel's bottom lip, but didn't give him the satisifaction of a full blown, tonsil tasting kiss. Let him wait a little, she thought. Let him suffer, just a tiny bit before he understood how awesome getting what she wanted could be.

"My vessel feels very strange."

"I bet it does," Dean said, her hands roaming beneath his open shirt, her nails digging into his shoulders. He remained immovable beneath her, unyielding strength not unlike polished marble. But she would break him. Oh hells yeah, she'd break him.

"It appears to be a problem in the abdominal region."

"Trust me, I'll take care of it."

///

Bobby and Sam were now looking expectantly at Dean, with Bobby more decidedly green in the gills than Dean's sister. "I'd tell you to go on, but I think I learned more than I needed to," Bobby said.

"I can't believe you tried to rip Cas's clothes off," Sam agreed.

"Don't you judge me, Bobby," Dean warned. "I got a little high on the girl power, okay? Man--Who knew women could get so riled up like that? Even just thinking about it...All those buttons popping and...Man. My head's kinda spinning. Whoa. Oh, and just in case you weren't listening, Miss Sammy Manners, it was Jimmy's clothes I was trying to rip off, not Cas's." Her assertion faltered as she realised this admission was highly self incriminating. She gave up on trying to foster innocence. "Okay, until Cas woke up, then yeah, I guess you're right. Dammit. Look, I got caught up in the moment, okay? It was all hormones. Lots and lots of horny hormones." Dean shifted uncomfortably on the bed, edging away from Castiel's close proximity. "Besides, nothing happened."

"Whatever."

"Yeah, well I wouldn't be sitting up there in your little bitch queen high and mighty chair if I were you, Sammy, not with that hickey the size of a dinner plate on your neck!"

Sam's hand clamped tight on her clavicle, guiltily concealing the evidence from Bobby. Her mouth pulled into a prim line. "Bitch!"

Castiel winced, his fingertips lightly touching his forehead. "Every time you mention that incident, Jimmy starts choking the blood vessels leading to his brain. It is very painful." Castiel tried to ease the pressure with a harder massage from the heels of his palms, all to no avail. "He seems to be very angry with me."

"Yeah, well, tell him to quit beating himself up. He's more disappointed than angry, and I can't really blame him." Dean flatly replied. "Seeing as how projectile vomiting tends to kill the mood."

Bobby drank the rest of his beer, never so happy to hear about the effects of food poisoning in his life.

"I'll never eat a burrito again," Sam said, relaxing the hand at her neck.

"Add a side of fries to my list," Dean said, her mouth a twisted grimace.

"You are greatly exaggerating the significance of that incident," Castiel stonily replied. "There was no harm intended, the vessel felt the need for expulsion."

"Expulsion," Dean said. She fluttered her hands from head to chest, swallowing with effort at the memory. "An expulsion of very old grease, spuds and salsa. I took five very hot showers, used up a bar of soap and two bottles of shampoo and yet, even now, when I run my fingers through my hair my palms still smell like vintage bean dip."

"Jimmy wants to me to say he thinks you smell like lilies," Castiel said.

"Tell Jimmy there are no Vogue magazines in hell," Dean firmly replied.

The climax of the ancient porno was noisily reaching its end in the background, the tiny television it was displayed on not quite small enough to leave anything to imagination. Bad seventies haircuts and macrame furnishings aside, whoever had held the camera certainly knew a thing or two about focusing. After a beat of about five seconds, Dean quickly hit the pause button, a naked orgy of two women and three men morphed into a spidery, purple tinged conglomeration of limbs, cellulite and hair.

"That one," Dean said, pointing to the panting face of one eager participant. "Look at her eyes."

The recognition wasn't lost on anyone in the room. Black eyes stared sightlessly outward, the unmistakable dark emptiness of a demon's soul captured on damaged 1974 celluloid.

"Her name's Bridgette," Dean said. "Considering she now looks the same age despite the thirty-six year difference tells me this is our demon."

"The showgirl at the casino," Bobby said, nodding sagely. He turned the beer he held in his hands, the aluminum light and yielding. "The dots connect up."

"They *did* connect up," Sam interjected. Using her laptop, she opened a local newspaper article she'd bookmarked earlier and showed it to Bobby. "Unfortunately, Bridgette is now officially dead of an apparent drug overdose. Her body was found by her landlord yesterday morning. I'm guessing it's what she originally died of back when that porno was made."

"So we're back at square one, trying to find out who the demon's hiding in now." Bobby stood up and adjusted the waist of his jeans, a grunt of thought accompanying the action. The whole afternoon had turned into one hell of a bad penthouse letter. Bobby sighed, his back turned to Sam, who was now typing away at the keyboard of her laptop, clinging to what shred of innocence she could with her silence.

"You should never have let her go off alone with that Paul dude," Bobby said, shaking his head in disappointment with Dean. "Cactus or no, you took a misstep there, girlie."

"Sam can take care of herself," Dean shrugged.

"Bullshit," Bobby harshly replied. "Instead of sitting in here, exploring your new territory, you ought to have been out there, making sure your *sister* was safe."

"Yeah, well, maybe I'm feeling a little low on the machismo," Dean said.

"GODDAMMIT!"

Bobby's hand came down on the tiny white aluminum kitchen table, Sam's quick reflexes the only thing that saved her laptop. She hugged it close to her chest as an infuriated Bobby came at the table again like the hammer of God himself. It crumpled beneath his fist like the foil in a pack of cigarettes.

"I been patient," Bobby boomed. "And I been real good at listening. But so help me God, I won't be standing by idle while John Winchester's *daughters* act like a couple of cheap dime casino whores!" He kicked the table out of the way, its frame banging against the far wall, chipping a huge, dark dent in the white plaster. "You're lucky you got an angel in you, boy," Bobby growled at Castiel, though his words were for Jimmy. "I'd rip your head off your neck so damned fast..."

"Bobby," Sam said, her laptop held tightly against her chest as she meekly concentrated on where the crumpled table was now resting. "You should calm down. It's not like I don't have plenty of training if anything went wrong. Dean's right, I was perfectly fine."

"There's nothing 'fine' about any of this," Bobby's dark, heavy voice boomed as it fell on Sam. "I want to know about this Paul. Damn you, Sam, if he's such a nice guy, he'd better be a honest to God saint, 'cause I hate to remind ya--you ain't got the best track record."


	5. Chapter 5

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: five

Rating: PG-13 (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.

Summary: What happened in Vegas refused to stay there. There are consequences to every decision, to every destiny. The pattern is in the fallout.

Note: My apologies to the Ting Tings o.O''

a lingering fringe--chapter five

The heavy rap of knuckles on the motel room door rudely broke its way through the heated conversation. All pretence of fury evaporated at this perceived threat, and Bobby raised his hand, signalling silence as he crept closer. There was a distinctive click behind him as Dean got her magnum cocked and ready, Sam following close behind with a thick silver dagger in one hand, a bottle of fresh holy water in the other. Castiel was unperturbed as he stood beside Bobby, his hands deep in the pockets of his trenchcoat in casual question. Considering they didn't have a clue what was behind door number one, Bobby would have preferred that those touchy feely fingers were out and ripe for smiting, not sitting in those big pockets waiting for a game of quick draw.

There was another knock, more forceful this time. Shoulders went back, guns were held ready. Bobby placed a meaty hand on the door jamb, ready to toss it open on the count of three and blow whatever was trying to sneak in on their family spat to smithereens.

"Sam? Are you in there?" The person on the other side of the door was male, and from the now heavy rap on the plywood it was clear he wasn't leaving without getting an answer. "Are you all right?"

Dean sighed, and secreted her weapon in the back of her jeans. "It's Paul," she said to Bobby. "Go ahead, let him in."

Bobby wanted an explanation, but Sam wasn't giving it, the standing issue resolving itself. "You wanted to meet him," Sam said.

Bobby steeled himself for the confrontation. He opened the door just as the man Sam referred to as that 'nice guy' Paul was about to pound on the thin plywood with all his might which, considering his wiry bulk, would have been sufficient to smash a hole in it. He was surprised by Bobby's admittance, his fist punching an invisible wall as it remained halted above his head. He took in Bobby's fierce, unwelcome demeanour and wisely let his fist fall to his side, smooth fingers wiped against the thigh of his black jeans.

"Hey there," Paul said, searching out the suspicion forced upon him by Bobby's small eyed glare and meeting it with the piercing blue of his own. "I'm here for Sam."

"Don't have much manners, do you?" Bobby said, still not letting him in. "Where I come from, people properly introduce themselves before making demands for a girl's company."

Paul glanced over Bobby's shoulder, taking in Sam at the far end of the room, her bottle of holy water carelessly dangling in her grip. The broken table lay beside her, the gaping wound in the wall an extension of the violence that had played out not moments before. "Paul Nash," he said, his hand ready to shake Bobby's. It was ignored. "I'm a friend of Sam's."

"Friend, huh?" Bobby said.

"Yeah," Paul said. He cast another glance Sam's way, his eyes narrowing as they came back to Bobby. Paul's voice was infuriatingly calm. "Everything okay here, Sam? I heard some shouting, and I just thought I'd check in before we headed out."

"I'm fine," Sam weakly replied.

Paul stood his ground, his hands on his hips, pushing his suit jacket out of the way. There was a certain arrogance in this swagger that was more than familiar to Bobby. Paul Nash's intelligence was assessing and critical on the surface of deeper concern. With his white shirt neatly unbuttoned at the neck, his jeans pressed and clean and his suit jacket so sharp you could cut yourself on the sleeves, Bobby knew Paul Nash could only be one thing.

"You're a cop," Bobby sneered.

"Yeah, I am," Paul said, stepping closer, the tense standoff between the two large men ready to erupt into a full blown war. "Is that a problem for you?"

"Only if you make it one," Bobby promised.

The tension was quickly becoming too much for Sam, and she inched beside Dean who was now laying on her back on the bed, her arms wrapped tight around her uneasy stomach. Sam elbowed her sister sharply in the ribs, earning a curse instead of support. "This is bad," Sam silently mouthed to Dean. Dean could only sigh, the fluffy pink pillow beside her now pulled tight against her stomach.

"Dean, a little help? Please?" Sam's whispered pleading grated on Dean's already frayed nerves. Castiel, no longer seeing a threat from Paul, had returned to his favoured spot on the edge of the bed, his brooding contemplation broken by a poke from Dean's big toe. The angel didn't have to be reminded twice as he instantly massaged an aching kink out of the arch of Dean's foot, the sinews of it relaxing beneath the talent of strong hands exploring the artistic vision that was God's creation of podiatry. Dean closed her eyes and sighed happily into the tension easing touch, her body and mind easily transported to the periphery of paradise. Sam's panicked buzzing at her ear was barely audible. "What the hell are you doing?" The pleasurable touch was suddenly yanked away, chilling Dean's warm feeling.

"Dean has been kind enough to allow me to study some facets of human anatomy," Castiel said, answering Sam. "I have never had the opportunity to fully appreciate the construction of the ankle before. My vessel is too filled with my presence to self-investigate."

"You can check out the construction of my shoulders later," Dean added. She let out a relaxed, satisfied yawn.

"I would greatly appreciate that opportunity," Castiel stonily replied.

Sam eyed Bobby's back with an increasing sense of panic. Paul wasn't about to back down, and neither was Bobby. She wasn't sure what the fight was about, other than the fact that Sam had made the usual big mistake of making a friend. Part of her wanted to rail about how unfair this was, but then, as Bobby had so violently made clear, it was Sam's fault this situation had come to this. Seeing that her sister was too wrapped up in her own issues to be of any help, Sam slunk her way neatly between the two men, her tiny features dwarfed by the mutual flexing of testosterone between Paul and Bobby.

"I'm ready to head out if you are," Sam said to Paul, her forced cheerfulness doing nothing to break the bad mood that refused to abate. She checked her watch. "I know it's a little early..."

"It's four am," Bobby reminded her.

"It's a long drive." Sam said. "We'll probably stop for breakfast first."

"I'm taking Sam to the observatory," Paul said, his chin held high against Bobby's wall of fatherly fury. "I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name."

"Didn't give it," Bobby said.

"This is Bobby," Sam said, inching past him and smoothly linking her arm around Paul's. "He's our uncle."

"He's been like a dad to us," Dean had to add, earning a warning glare from her sister.

"Good to meet you, Bobby," Paul said, but the sentiment wasn't heartfelt. To Sam's horror, Paul dared to wrap his strong arm around her shoulders, a gentle squeeze suggesting a claim to her that Bobby, her uncle, wasn't privy to. He gave Sam's forehead a gentle kiss, an action that Bobby didn't miss if the sudden clenching of his meaty paws were any indication.

"You'd better watch yourself, pal," Bobby said.

"Don't worry about me," Paul said, his calm voice like absinthe across Bobby's ire. "There's no detail that I miss."

Bobby's anger stewed as Paul and Sam walked out of the motel, their comfortable company making his skin crawl. Paul's arm slid from around Sam's shoulders to a far more provocative winding around her waist. Bobby slammed the motel door shut, and without so much as the time it took to make a fist he punched a new hole in the white wall beside him. "A goddamned cop. Well don't that beat all."

"Your anger is misplaced," Castiel said. "Paul Nash poses no threat to us. If anything, his concern over Sam's well being should be commended. Your temper in this matter needs to be checked."

"You don't need to be playing high and mighty on Bobby," Dean snapped. "He's just worried, that's all. Look, I know it's freaky, seeing us like this and it's hard to get your mind around and all, but Sam was right about one thing. Much as I hate to admit it, we've had a whole week to normalize it. Sam hanging with Paul, it's okay, really."

Bobby wasn't convinced. He sank onto the edge of Sam's bed, a fluffy pink pillow pulled into his lap. "You go right ahead and try to *normalize* this for me," he said. "You got an hour to cram in the rest of this Valley of the Dolls week of yours."

Dean stood up, pacing the room as she rubbed the small of her back. "Geez, it's so damn sore. Those painkillers are already wearing off." She gave her predicament a resigned sigh, and picked up the TV remote. "Sam had a good time that night." She hit the stop button, the paused porno replaced with a blue screen. "I sure wish I did."

///

Four a.m. That was the hour Dean realized that Sam wasn't back yet, and that sending her on her own with some strange guy may have not been a good idea. Guilt wound an ugly path through her gut, a feeling made worse by the evidence she'd just found on that old seventies porno. Demons were walking Vegas, and they had a better handle on the odds than the Winchesters ever did.

The front door key turned in the lock, and Dean leapt over Castiel's snoozing form in the bed. Thanks to the bad burrito incident, Dean was now clad in nothing save the complimentary pink sweetheart bathrobe cheekily provided by the motel to its supposed newlywed guests. Castiel had likewise scrubbed himself to perfection, and was now enduring the early Nevada morning heat in nothing save a pair of red silk boxer shorts--Another odd perk of taking the honeymoon suite.

These details were lost to Dean when Sam walked through the door, the unmistakable scent of cigarettes and sex following her in. Dean crossed her arms, hiding the valley of her considerable cleavage beneath pink chenille hearts. "Where the hell have you been?"

"With Paul," Sam blithely replied. She ran her fingers through her tangled brown hair. There was a red mark at the base of her neck, hovering towards her shoulder blade, just barely hidden by the oversized black t-shirt she wore. "He's not a demon."

"I know," Dean said, her expression still cross. "I found the one that did this." She refused to say more, but Sam wasn't interested. She yawned, and pushed Dean aside, hips slightly swinging as she headed in the direction of the shower.

"You could have called," Dean snapped.

"Why bother? It's not like you would have been able to hear me." Sam turned, her eyes dreamy as she recalled the events of the evening. "He took me to this bar where his friend was playing. It was wild, you would have loved it. His friend Kelvin did all these Clash covers and then Paul got up and did a John Cale riff. It was awesome, Dean. You should have been there."

"I guess so," Dean said, anger quickly replacing guilt.

"I don't know how many zombie shots I had, but it was a bit more than I'm used to." Sam slightly swayed as she turned and headed for the shower once again. "He invited you and Cas along for tomorrow's set. We should go, Dean, it'll be a blast."

"Nah," Dean said, shaking her head. "I wouldn't want to interfere on your date."

Sam instantly sobered at this. "It wasn't a 'date'."

"Really? You meet up with this guy, you go out to a party, you get a few drinks in and he plays a guitar, just for you. Come on, you played the part of a sex starved groupie. You even got a little reminder of him in the shape of his tongue on your neck." Dean let out a low, derisive whistle. "Gee, Sam. Kissing on the first date. What's next? Copping a feel on a moonlit beach? Considering how classy you've been acting, maybe it's more like a pole dance during the mid afternoon lunch special."

"It wasn't like that. Don't involve me in your skanky mindset, Paul was a perfect gentleman."

"Who got you drunk."

"I got myself drunk. Dean, for God's sake, he didn't want me going off alone, he insisted he bring me back to the motel." There was an uncomfortable pause at this. "Of course, he is in the room directly across from this one. Weird coincidence, I know, but hey, we specialize in weird, right?"

"He's in the room next door?" Dean was scandalized. "There's no such thing as coincidence, that guy is as demonic as the twelve faces of Hell!"

"He's not demonic," Sam said, shrugging Dean's concerns off. "As far as hellfires go, he's as far from them as you can get. He's from some tiny place in Alberta. Land of ice and snow, not molten lava." There was a distinct pause at this information as Sam waited for Dean to hear the punch line. "He's a cop."

Oh. No. This was way worse than Dean had anticipated. Not only had this Paul guy managed to weasel his way into the Winchester timeline, he'd also revealed himself as one hell of a liability even if he *wasn't* a demon. Which Dean doubted, since there was no way a normal human being had that much serendipity attached to them.

"He's a fucking cop?"

"Dean, keep your voice down. Come on, he's from way up north, it's no big deal."

"All of a sudden, nothing is a big deal with you." Dean paced angrily in front of her sister, fingers digging deep into the soft chenille covering her arms. "Even if he isn't a demon, it's hella weird that he keeps showing up wherever you are. He's a cop, Sam, he knows how to track people."

"So what are you saying?"

"He's a stalker, Sam! An obsessed psycho stalker!"

Sam choked on this, shocked laughter stuck deep in her throat. "You're kidding, right? So, it doesn't matter if Paul is a demon or not, in your mind he's always going to be some kind of monster just because of his association with me."

"I didn't say that," Dean said, her anger waning at this.

"I don't have to be some psychic, demon blood infested freak to know that's exactly what you're thinking," Sam said. "Whatever, Dean. It doesn't matter, because for the first time since we started this whole mess, I finally got to have a one hundred percent human evening, one that didn't end in rounds of rock salt or me getting the shit kicked out of me by some vengeful black eyed entity. I had *fun*, Dean. I'm sorry if that's so difficult for you to deal with."

Sam stormed into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The lack of hot water made her curse, and she left it running while she marched towards her duffel bag, taking out a clean t-shirt to sleep in.

"Yeah, well while you were out having your fun, I was stuck here dealing with a sick angel and figuring out how to get us back to being Adam instead of Eve. Didn't you hear what I said earlier? I found the demon that did this to us!"

Sam paused, the t-shirt held limp in her hand. "I guess I spoke too soon. This night will end in a killing spree after all." She sighed, and pushed some stray locks of hair behind her ears, her features tiny and elf like in their feminine contours. "So what have you found out?"

"Okay, listen carefully. About an hour ago, Cas and I were laying in bed together watching a porno..."

There was a tense silence at this information. Sam rolled her eyes. "Dean. Seriously. Keep it to yourself."

"Oh give it up, Sam, it's not what you think."

At this moment, of course, Castiel got up groggily from the bed, his hand blithely scratching at the wrinkled hem of the red silk boxers, his mouth opened wide in a prolonged yawn. He rolled his bare shoulders to get the kinks out of them, his head cocked towards the bathroom at the sound of running water.

"I had thought our earlier session in the shower had sufficed," Castiel said to Dean.

"Stop thinking what you're thinking" Dean warned her. "You don't have to keep looking at me like that, Sam! Nothing happened!"

"Dean, you're wearing nothing but a bathrobe and he's practically naked." Sam made a face. "Why does this room smell like bean dip?"

Castiel winced, the heel of his palm pressed tight against his forehead. Jimmy, getting his revenge. Dean had her own pains, a low ache in her back that refused to abate and that had now spread to her groin. Her body felt fidgety and uncomfortable, and while she felt hungry for a good breakfast she had the weirdest craving for a Hershey chocolate bar followed by a salt and vinegar chips chaser.

"I am suddenly feeling unwell," Castiel said.

"Impossible. You took a whole bottle of Gravol." Dean turned on her sister. "Must be nice to pack up all your troubles and party like it's 2009. I don't know if you noticed, but the apocalypse is approaching. Not exactly the time of year to be having zombie shots with geriatric punk rockers."

Sam was unapologetic. "You're just mad because you were wanting to punish me, and I had fun instead."

Had fun. With some complete stranger, the only thing they knew about him, and not even for certain, was his name. Dean inwardly seethed. After all the sacrifices made, the horrible tortures of hell, the feeling of not having a body and yet being so intensely physical--The whole perversion of her existence had left Dean feeling adrift in the world she'd been brought back into, as though she wasn't truly a part of it. Like she was floating through it in ghostly visitation.

And here was Sam, the most guilty of testing the boundaries of the physical with demon blood and supernatural powers, all by damned *choice*, and here she was, getting all dreamy eyed over what it meant to be truly human.

They'd fallen off that path a long time ago. They were both so full of things disconnected to this world it was like they hadn't even been born here. It was about time Sam was reminded of that.

"I can't believe you went to a rock concert without me," Dean angrily spat at Sam. Her real feelings lay lurking behind an aching back and sore breasts. "You should have called."

"It was British punk rock retro with a side of modern alternative. You hate anything that wasn't part of the soundtrack of Maximum Overdrive." Sam slumped into the kitchen chair, the sound of the shower like rain in the background. "You're right, I should have called. But I got the feeling you didn't want me around anyway."

Dean slumped into the chair beside Sam, the pressure on her back easing only slightly. "It just pisses me off."

"Dean?"

Dean's knee was bouncing beneath the table, her emotions raw and sore, past memories of an abnormal childhood spent in one seedy motel room after another culminating into the ultimate suckage as her, no *his*, body was pulled kicking and screaming into hell. She caught Castiel's overly intent glare and, without wasting one second of opportunity, she let fly a good chunk of her own hurt back at him.

"For fuck's sake, don't just stand there, wake Jimmy the hell up and tell him to make a pot of coffee! What kind of angel wakes up at five am and doesn't understand something that basic? Coffee! Now!"

Sam stared at her sister, dumbfounded. "You don't have to be so miserable, come on, get a grip."

But Dean had only just started. It was like a floodgate of fury had suddenly been demolished, and all the rage she'd kept pent up for the last thirty-five years of her life had been set forth to soak the room. "If you can't manage that, you celestial brainiac, maybe you could point a finger at an egg and make it good and hard boiled! Don't think I've forgiven you about last night, you garbage eating barf machine! That wasn't white light I mopped up!"

Castiel's usually dour expression was now tempered with anger. "I was not made aware of the consequences of consuming that item. I am confused by this sudden rage of yours. Last night, you were helpful and kind to me during my vessel's illness."

Dammit. He was looking at her now with all the hurt of a kicked puppy, his confusion so raw it made her tear up to know she'd been the cause of it. It wasn't fair to project all her inner torment on Castiel like this, not when he'd been the one to make the biggest sacrifice of all. He'd given up *heaven* for Dean. No more choir practise, no more hanging with the other angels making smores out of clouds. However unlikely it was that heaven was like this, Dean couldn't help but feel that she was solely responsible for Cas's predicament.

He picked one hell of a human mess for his saviour.

"Dean," Sam said, intruding on her brooding. "Why the hell are you crying?"

"I don't know!" Dean howled. She clenched her fists and punched the surface of the kitchen table. "I keep thinking of all our..our *stuff*, and it's just getting to me. Way more than usual. Cas, I'm sorry I went psycho on you. It just blurted out, and that's not even what I was thinking about."

Sam shook her head, her laptop already in her grip. She sighed, and turned it on, the anti-hexing screensaver coming to life in pale blues. "I tell you, Dean, you are having one hell of a PMS breakdown."

Dean was quiet a long moment. "I have what?" she asked.

"PMS," Sam said, her attention riveted to the screen. "You saw that demon on a porno, is that what you were telling me earlier?"

"Yeah, some seventies skin flick. Black eyes, bad macrame in the background. She called herself Bridgette when I met her at the casino. You saw her, too." Dean felt tense. "Sam, back up, about the PMS thing."

"Bridgette The Busty Housewife? Says here it was made in 1974."

"Sounds about right," Dean quietly replied.

"Bridgette Furlough. Dropped out of the porn business in '75, and didn't resurface until...Well, never. Except for this Bridgette Furlough, who is currently living here in Vegas at 67th and 9th street. I'm guessing this is your showgirl." Sam glanced over the lip of her laptop, Dean's pale face made blue by the light from the screen. The red tinged image of the original Bridgette Furlough in all her busty, nude glory grinned provocatively back at her. Sam hit the play button, and the film grainily woke into life, the five minute clip of the familiar bedroom orgy replaying in the tiny window. Dean wanted to find some way to be turned on by it, but as had happened the night before, all the porno did was make her sad.

"I guess her kid's braces are off by now," Dean said.

"Is something bothering you?" Sam asked.

"Maybe," Dean said. She watched Castiel in the periphery of her vision, his clueless attempt to put together the coffee machine sweet and endearing. A well of unbidden, severe feeling started bubbling up anew, and she dabbed at the corner of her eyes with the soft chenille sleeves of her bathrobe.

"Look up PMS for me," Dean said.

"I was just joking," Sam replied. "Come on, you don't seriously think this goes that far."

"My vessel isn't feeling very well," Castiel said.

"Signs and symptoms," Dean said. A lukewarm cup of something resembling partially distilled mud was placed before her. Castiel's hopeless attempt at coffee. "You've got to be kidding me. Honestly, Cas, how hard is it to read the instructions on the can?"

Castiel couldn't reply. The sound of something dark and terrible welled deep within his vessel's gut. Within seconds, Sam and Dean were made aware of what it was.

///

"Sam was right. It wasn't a black bean," Dean said, her face pasty pale at the memory. She gave Bobby's impatient glare an uncertain smile. "Puts you up to speed, though. The rest of the week has been fairly uneventful. Kind of nice, actually. Paul invited us all to Kelvin's last set on Friday night, and that was actually a lot of fun." Dean grinned at the memory. "I wore a white tank top. Got lots of free shots."

Castiel was not so enamored. "What passes for music in this world is highly difficult for me to understand. The choirs of heaven are in constant refrain, the intonations precise in their glory. But here, there is much discord even within the boundaries of harmonics." He paused, his brow furrowing in further contemplation. "Although, that last 'band' as you called them, they had an interesting arrangement. I can't seem to get it out of my mind." His head slightly bobbed back and forth, his voice monotone. "That's not my name...That's not my name...That's not my..name."

Dean grabbed Castiel roughly by the shoulder, forcing him to face her. "I told you," she said, getting all in his face about it. "Both Sam and I have had this discussion with you, Cas! You are never to sing that song again! Ever. Ever, ever. Got it?"

The argument was not one that had Bobby especially concerned, not with how easily Dean was standing so close to his chosen angel, the deeply lurking Jimmy having one heck of a great ride to go with it. The fact the Winchester sisters had seemed to find some equilibrium in the situation calmed some, but not all, of Bobby's worries. "I have to hand it to you and Sam, you two are handling this a lot better than most could."

"Just doing what we have to do, Bobby," Dean replied.

"Right. Which is why I'm staying out of it."

"What? Bobby, wait!"

"Wait for what?" Bobby said, his voice firm as he looked down at Dean's stricken expression, her pleading pulling hard on deep, instinctual fatherly care. If she kept it up, he'd be willing to head out and buy her a pony at the first suggestion. A whole imagined alternate history was already brewing in his mind, one complete with Barbie dolls, pink chiffon and assualt rifles. "Hell, I'm no idiot, I can see it ain't been an easy week for either of you, but facts are facts, Dean. How you both got turned girly might be supernatural, but it sure ain't unnatural enough to worry about." Bobby sighed, and scratched the back of his neck in thought. "Facts are, armageddon's coming up on our ass but quick. Seems to me, if someone wanted to distract you from preventing that, they'd be working hard to make sure every obstacle, no matter how weird, would be thrown your way. And that's what this is, Dean. It's a distraction."

"But we have to find the demon responsible!" Dean argued.

"No way, no how is that going to do you any favours. It's a waste of valuable time." Bobby tipped his cap at her. "Blowing off steam is one thing, but forgetting the great big elephant sitting at the bar is another. Time ain't standing still. Tell your sister to shake off her new boyfriend and get back to work saving the damned world."

"We can't just stay like this!" Dean protested, but Bobby was already out the door. His shadow was consumed by the narrow hallway as he turned left, toward the main entrance. She slammed the door shut, the dull ache in her back now replaced with a sick feeling not unlike abandonment. Well, at least she wasn't totally alone. She still had Cas on her side, and if she really wanted to get technical, Jimmy too.

"...Maybe Jolicia, always the same...That's not my name..." Castiel muttered under his breath.

"STOP IT!"


	6. Chapter 6

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: six

Rating: R (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam/omc that looks like Hugh Dillon, genderswap, Trickster, etc.

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.

Summary: What happened in Vegas refused to stay there. There are consequences to every decision, to every destiny. The pattern is in the fallout.

Note: Feedback is love! Even if you're telling me you hate it!

a lingering fringe--chapter six

The diner was only just opening when Sam and Paul entered, earning a raised brow from the grizzled alcoholic waitress who seated them. "Most folks around here like to let the birds wake up first before they start frying up their eggs," she said, her pencil poised over her notepad, her breath already scented with gin. Her mouth was a thick red gash of lipstick that approximated a smile. "I guess you two lovebirds got the jump on them. What'll it be?"

Paul slid into the booth next to Sam, his arm playfully wrapped around her shoulders while he nuzzled his face against her neck. "How's this for sharing a perch?" he said.

Sam blushed, but she didn't push him off. "I'll just have a coffee. Black with sugar."

"I'll have the same," Paul said. His lips were burning on Sam's ear as he whispered into it. "Just like the Ottomans. Hot as hell, sweet as love, and black as death." He trailed his thumb along Sam's throat, sending a familiar thrill through her that left her breathless. Paul smiled against her neck, and gave her ear a tiny nibble before pulling away. Sam kept her eyes hooded as she glanced at the waitress, who was now having a heated discussion with the cook in the kitchen.

"You shouldn't do that to me in public," Sam said.

Paul reached into his suit jacket pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He tapped it onto the table, shaking one out. Grinning, he gave Sam a chaste peck on the cheek before placing the cigarette between his lips. "I love this whole virgin territory thing you got going," he said. He cupped his hands around the tip of his cigarette as he lit it, smoke caressing the air as it rose above them. He took a long drag, releasing his breath with a smoky sigh. "It's like the first time, every time."

"Those things are going to kill you," Sam reminded him.

The waitress who took their order was not amused, her mouth now in its more familiar role of expressing intense displeasure. She stabbed a well manicured red nail at the far wall, the yellowed No Smoking sign barely legible. "Take your cancer stick outside. Bad enough my back's shot, I'm not ruining my lungs for you too."

Paul took the cigarette out of his mouth, its burning tip now waving in indecision as he tried to weigh whether it would be better to simply put it out or finish it outside. With an apologetic lean towards Sam, Paul slid out of his seat, his ardour extinguished thanks to the siren call of nicotine addiction.

"You should take this as a sign from above and quit," Sam shouted to him. Paul placed the cigarette between his lips as he left the diner, ignoring what he knew was good advice.

Still, Sam had to admit there was something sexy about a man standing alone, his seeming invulnerability broken by the appearance of that line of smoke that curled in polluted twists above him. His profile was strong and perfect against the hot horizon of a Nevada morning, and yet here was this one whisper of defeat, one that Sam herself comprehended far too well. No, a cigarette wasn't demon blood, but she knew the need it represented. Sometimes, temptation couldn't be resisted. Paul leaned his shoulder against the diner window and Sam, drawn to this small isolation, placed her palm against the glass in understanding empathy.

Her cell phone rang, rudely jostling her out of her thoughts. She ignored the disapproving glare of the waitress as she answered it, a quick scan of the diner's grimy brown walls not revealing any obscured signs forbidding their use. Before she could even say a proper hello, Dean was already letting fly her panic. Sam held the phone aloft, Dean's high pitched voice hurting her ear.

"He took off!" Dean shouted. "He's not going to help us, Sam! We're going to be stuck being like this forever!"

"Calm down," Sam said.

"How can I do that, Sammy? How?" Dean's hysteria was loud enough to earn the attention of the gash-lipped waitress, who was now cleaning the counters with a filthy dish rag. "I'm sore, I'm miserable, and Jimmy keeps looking at me *that* way, and whatever crazy mood I was in earlier this week has definitely put on a pair of boots and went walking. If Jimmy doesn't quit it with the x-ray eyes, I'm going to rip them out of his head with a nail file and a pair of eyebrow tweezers. For God's sake, Sam, why isn't this obvious to you?"

"Why isn't what obvious?"

There was an incredulous pause. "That being a woman sucks!"

Paul was now standing in profile, his chin held high as he let out another stream of kissed pollution, his lips caressing the smoke with a concentrated pout that Sam knew first hand had a great deal of skill attached. She hesitated against Dean's opinion, her own feelings on the matter obscured by a very different set of circumstances that she had been fortunate enough to experience. As Paul turned, giving her a knowing wink, a deep fire began to well within Sam's new carnal knowledge, and it was this that silently told her no, Dean had it all wrong. The benefits of the feminine sure did outweigh the negative.

"What exactly did Bobby say?" Sam said, but she had little interest in what Dean had to reveal. She only half listened as Dean prattled hysterically about how Bobby said they should give up their search for the gender bending demon who did this to them. That it was a waste of time. That it still sure as hell was damned unnatural that they were now sisters instead of brothers. Blah, blah, blah. Sam yawned as Paul crushed his cigarette beneath his heel and made his way back into the diner.

"He does have a point, Dean," Sam said, the mention of her sister's name stiffening Paul's easy swagger as he seated himself across from Sam. He brooded into his coffee with unease, his hands cupped around the white mug protectively. Sam, bemused, added another helping of sugar and stirred it in with slow circles of her teaspoon, the gentle whirlpool reminding her of another kind of spiral that had been impossible to resist. "I mean, it's not like we were turned into monsters."

A swearing, high pitched tirade of how Sam and Bobby were in conspiracy against Dean erupted over the cell phone.

"... You can tell that son of a bitch you're sitting with that I made a special ashtray just for him. Full of salt and vinegar for when he and Lucifer decide to go outside and have a puff!"

Paul wisely kept counsel with the mug of coffee in his grip, his lips pressed tightly in a firm line as he kept his opinion of Sam's sister to himself. "Listen, Dean, I'm going to have to call you later," Sam said. She snapped the cell phone and Dean's fury shut, pulling the diner into an eerie quiet.

Paul tapped the side of his mug with impatient fingers. "I'm starting to get the feeling your family doesn't like me much," he said.

"It's got nothing to do with you," Sam said. "It's Simon."

Paul nodded over his coffee. He sipped it, the heat on his tongue making him wince. "Your brother Simon sure knows how to destroy people," he observed.

Sam watched a tiny black bubble burst on the surface of her own cup of brew. She took an unhappy sip, the coffee cooled to lukewarm. "Yeah, he sure does," she said.

"Anything you want to talk about?" Paul offered.

"No," Sam said, her voice firm as she put down her mug of coffee. There was no room for talk, for explanation. Even with her small experimental weakness with Jimmy and Cas, there was no way Dean was going to understand how far Sam had already travelled down the road Orlando. That first night with Paul had made sure of that.

As if sensing her unease, Paul rested his hand on Sam's arm, caressing the tension from it with soft strokes from his thumb. He moved his touch in slow circles just shy of her elbow, the soft skin on the underside of her arm erupting into gooseflesh at the memory of where else that exact touch had been administered. She tried to shyly pull away, but Paul suddenly grabbed her wrist, his strong grip tight against the delicate bones as he pulled her closer across the table.

Ice blue eyes flashed with need, his words cut through clenched teeth. "If I wanted to, I could take you right now. Right on top of this table. Forget the coffee, I could have you for breakfast." He pulled her arm roughly towards his lips, where he stole a biting kiss. "Just like I did that first night we met."

///

Five nights earlier.

"What if he wants, you know..." Sam's mouth was dry in nervous fear. "More than I'm willing to give?"

"Then you do what every chick does," Dean said. "You smash him in the kneecaps with a steel pipe and you move on."

Dean's words of wisdom weren't exactly helpful, since Sam never had any problem taking out a bad guy be he demon or human. The trouble was that Paul, with his shy, apologetic smile and his eyes such a pale blue they could have been made of ice water, was a good guy. A really good guy. Sam could tell from the minute he'd placed himself at the bar beside her, his strong hands splayed wide on the surface of the Formica as he said to the red haired cougar behind the counter, "Two drinks, please."

The bartender gave him a lascivious once over, her cleavage given ample viewing as she leaned close. "Two of what, darling?"

"Whatever *she* wants," Paul said, inclining his head towards Sam.

Sam furiously blushed at this, hating Dean with every fibre of her being for putting her in this awkward situation. The bartender was making her opinion clear, her red claws clutching her hips in haughty expectation. "I'll, uh, I'll have another rum and coke," Sam said.

"It only took you an hour to finish the first one," the bartender bitched as she poured two of them. She chucked them rudely at both Sam and Paul, her smiles and manners directed at far classier prey at the other end of the bar. A group of Japanese businessmen who had just struck it even richer were happily spending their earnings on exuberant tips. Sam watched them with disinterest, her rum and coke untouched.

"Did you find the observatory?" Sam asked Paul. The pink plastic swizzle stick had a cherry stuck on it, and in a move she hoped appeared sexy she turned and provocatively popped it into her mouth, her tongue rolling over its sweet surface. At least, it was supposed to have been sweet. For some odd reason, this particular cherry was one of a bad batch, its bitter taste making her instantly gag. After some very loud public horking that even made the horny Japanese businessmen at the end of the bar take notice, she spat the offending fruit onto her napkin. Vile, medicinal tasting red cherry juice seeped out of the corner of her mouth and down her chin, her fingers only just preventing it from staining her t-shirt. "Gross!" she exclaimed.

"They're made of wax," Paul said, handing her his own napkin, which she used to wipe at her face as though she were towelling off the first layer of her skin. "Don't feel bad, I did the same thing yesterday. Apparently there's a maraschino cherry shortage, and lots of bars are improvising."

Sam roughly wiped her tongue with what was left of the napkin. Bits of red flaked off. "Wax?" Sam implored of the bartender.

The bartender flung her red mane back over her shoulders, her cleavage once again the main focus of any man's attention. "It's non-toxic," she said, absolving herself. She tapped the rim of Sam's rum and coke with a long, blood red fingernail. "Drink up. I got an anti-loitering rule."

She slunk back to the end of the bar, the sequins of her slender, hip hugging dress shimmering pink and silver hues beneath the incandescent lighting. Sam took a sip of her rum and coke, swishing it around in her mouth to dislodge the remainder of the wax embedded on her back molars. She spit it back out into her glass, backwash over ice.

Paul downed his in one swallow, neatly avoiding the wax cherry on the swizzle stick. "You know, I don't often say this, seeing as how corny and pathetic the whole cliche of it is. But in this case, I have to wonder." He leaned close to Sam, the wax cherry on his swizzle stick playfully bounced on her shoulder. "What the fuck are we doing in a place like this? The drinks are crap and they're too expensive, there's suited up assholes trying to make like they're rich, there's the whores trying to pretend they care and then there's you and there's me--Two people outside of the usual equation."

"Not really," Sam said. "You just used a godawful pick up line. One that's been used plenty of times before in this place."

"Nah, I'm not putting a move on you," Paul said, but his crooked smile said otherwise. Sam was, after all, very knowledgeable about the male of the species, and while this guy wasn't handing out player vibes, he certainly had a few of Dean's Casanova manoeuvring.

"Right," Sam said.

"No, really," Paul said, sincere. He inched closer. "We're not part of the whole physics of this thing. See how harmonious everyone else at this bar is? How they know their place, their lines, as though they'd been practised over and over before they came here? It's not like that for us, because we aren't part of their script. We've wandered into a pattern, and have disrupted it, forcing it to morph and descend into a chaos that will not be rectified until this pathway of discord finally gets shaken off by the order of consequence."

That certainly was a mouthful. Sam raised a brow at this supposed theory. "I guess you've just proved it, then. You and I shouldn't be sitting here talking. The whole world is at stake as a result."

"It just might be," Paul said. He tossed his wax cherry in front of Sam, who stopped it from rolling into her lap. "It's not a theory to me. It's a proven equation."

"Interesting," Sam said, though her sudden disinterest was clear. This had been a complete waste of time. Paul was no demon, he was just some deluded human being who hung out at bars using string theory as a pick up tool. No wonder he was able to empathize with Cas. Probably off the meds himself.

"I can prove it," Paul calmly said. He leaned closer to Sam, his smooth lips now teasing her ear in a sultry whisper. "The man at the end of the bar will be slapped across the face by the bartender in exactly three minutes."

"What brings you to that conclusion?" Sam asked. Fine, if the crazy man wanted to play, at least Sam could get some entertainment out of it.

Paul leaned back on his stool, a strange aura of victory about him. "The man beside me was distracted when you choked on that wax cherry. He hasn't noticed that one leg on his chair is uneven, and the matchbox holding it in place has slipped out. Very soon, he will topple forward and his hand will spill his drink, right at the very moment that red headed harpy starts heading back here, determined to get rid of us."

"Whatever, pal," Sam said. He gestured to the bartender, hoping to get at least a glass of water for her trouble with the wax. Sam was given a furious glare in response.

As the bartender walked down the length of the bar, the man beside them suddenly slipped in his seat, his drink toppling onto the bar, soaking it and the stormy bartender with ice and gin. "Dammit, you idiot!" she shouted at him.

Sam watched in open mouthed shock, but Paul wasn't finished. "See, this is how it begins. Now we watch the fallout, as she tries to dry herself with the towel, and slips on a piece of ice. She will careen towards the end of the bar, where, most helpfully, a drunken Japanese businessman will try to dry her cleavage with his tie."

As these events played out exactly as Paul described, Sam had the sinking, unpleasant feeling that she was not in presence of a human being after all. She reached around the back of her jeans, the handle of her gun held tight. "How are you foreseeing all this?" she asked. "You must be some kind of psychic."

"No, I'm not into parlour tricks," Paul said, offended by the suggestion. He directed her back to the drama at hand. "The man beside the Japanese businessman is stone cold sober, and he really is trying to help our unhappy bartender. But as he tries to push this other guy out of the way...Slap! He gets it by mistake."

Sure enough. Like an echoing side effect called upon by heaven itself. SLAP!

"You idiot, what did you get in the way for?" the bartender shouted at her patron, a huge red imprint of her hand on his cheek.

"How are you doing this?" Sam asked, shocked.

"Just human behaviour and simple geometry," Paul replied. "You can see a lot of things if you pay attention." His thumb circled the rim of the empty glass before him. "For instance, I've already figured out you and your sister and your cactus loving cousin aren't in Vegas for the bright lights and free bar nachos. But you don't have to tell me, I'll figure out the why of it myself."

He tossed some money on the counter, paying up their tab. He stood close to Sam, his icy gaze cooling the heat that suddenly crept along the length of her neck. He was far too close for comfort, but she didn't mind the proximity. He put his palm on her thigh, and Sam tensed at the touch instead of shoving it away.

"I know where we're supposed to be," Paul said, his whisper more intoxicating than the rum and coke Sam didn't drink. "There's this little dive in the basement of this place. My buddy, Kelvin, he's in this retro punk band, and he and a bunch of other musicians are playing there all this week."

"Why should this be the place I'm supposed to be?" Sam coyly asked.

"Because," Paul said, his ice-blue eyes piercing into her with a studied precision that sent a strange thrill through her abdomen. "The pattern I'm seeing when I look at you is that you are one person who is in desperate need of having some fun."

"You honestly believe that?" Sam replied, shaking her head at the foolishness of the suggestion. If there was one thing Sam Winchester had been forced to swear off since he and she had become a hunter, it was the concept of fun. Hell, if she wanted to get technical, not even Dean had been immune to that amputation. Pornos, cheap sexual escapades and $2.99 breakfasts were hardly harbingers of fond memories of a good life. Besides, kind as the offer was, Sam held too much weighted guilt in her heart to take what Paul was offering. It was against the pattern of the Winchester wheel of sorrow to just toss out all their troubles and have a selfish round of self-indulgence that didn't leave them feeling dirty at the end of it.

Paul took a cigarette from his side pocket and lit it, the simple action earning the fury of the bartender, who was now in full on bitch mode, her claws reaching out to Paul and snatching the cancer stick right out of his mouth. "There's no smoking here!" she stormed at him, snapping the cigarette in half. Tiny fibres of tobacco spilled from its injury like dried tendons. "You just earned a permanent one way ticket out of my bar!"

"I guess we've been given our ultimatum," Paul said. "So, what do you say?"

"I don't do fun," Sam admitted.

"I know, it's why I'm suggesting it. I can see how important it is to change certain patterns that have been coursing through your life. You are an attractive young woman, Sam, and I hate the thought of leaving you to some predestined path that finds its end in your misery." Paul's shoulder pressed tightly against Sam's, and with this close proximity Sam caught a whiff of sweet-smelling fabric softener lurking on the white shirt Paul wore beneath his carefully pressed suit-jacket. Demons weren't exactly keen on doing laundry, Sam recalled. Ruby's duds were considerably whiffy towards the end of their acquaintance.

The memory of her bit hard into Sam's conscience, and it was this that made her gently push Paul's flirting insistence away. "I'd love to go with you, but I don't think I have any more room for chaos in my life right now," Sam said. She handed him the wax cherry that had rolled into her lap earlier. "Besides, your theory of 'disrupting the pattern' clearly states that to do what we aren't supposed to has disastrous consequences."

"That's not what I said," Paul evenly replied. "Disasters are just as rooted to my equation, and with a little bit of know how, even the worst scenario can be avoided. You see, we need to walk away from our scripts and let the universe fall apart while it tries to right itself. You can't let anyone or any circumstance dictate to you what destiny supposedly means." He rolled the wax cherry between his fingertips before boldly placing it in the breast pocket of Sam's jean jacket. He took his time doing up the brass button, thus holding the decision captive. "It's our job, as human beings, to rattle the cage of expectation. It's the only way we can see what the pattern is, and call it by its real name."

Sam lightly bit her bottom lip, thinking the situation over. He was a stranger, and this didn't bode well in theory, but he wasn't giving off demon vibes so much as interesting conversationalist. Besides, even with the shaved head and the ice blue eyes and the strong physique, there was no question that Paul Nash was one hot catch of the day. Okay, maybe it was weird that she thought so, or not, considering she was a hot blooded heterosexual female and Paul was sending her all the right signals that she most definitely was responding to. In the back pocket of her jeans, her cell phone buzzed. With a quick flick of her fingers, she turned it off.

"Punk rock retro, huh?" she said, following Paul as he led the way. She slid her arm into his, enjoying the outline of his muscle against her palm. "Okay, but as long as there's nothing by AC/DC. My sister drives me nuts with that stuff."

"AC/DC is a heavy metal rock band," Paul said, correcting her. Sam remained blank, not fully understanding the difference between the genres. Big noisy guitars, loud drum riffs, screeching vocals. Pretty much the same animal, as far as Sam was concerned.

"Are you sure you want to try this?" Paul asked. "Kelvin's performances can get pretty wild."

"Yeah, why not?" Sam said, gaining confidence as they headed out of the bar. "What can I say? I've suddenly got a taste for chaos."

///

Two-thirty a. am. that morning, Sam staggered back to her motel, draped over Paul's arm like a worn coat. Her head was spinning from several hours of loud music and zombie gin shots, all amply provided by the colourful mix of people who had shown up to enjoy Kelvin's blend of eclectic Clash covers and modernist electro-thrash funk. Paul wasn't kidding when he said that Kelvin put on a hell of a show. Sam hadn't seen that much broken glass and pyrotechnics since she'd been witness to Anna reclaiming her Grace. Which, considering how sinfully fantastic the evening had been so far, was probably a blasphemous parallel.

"And this," Sam said, giggling drunkenly as she leaned against the motel room door. "Is where I'm staying."

Paul towered over her, his body slightly dampened from the sweat of a Nevada evening. He tossed the last remnant of his cigarette down the hall of the motel, and with his hands now fully free they wrapped around Sam's waist, thumbs gently teasing just below her ribs. Sam pressed her back against the door, her arms braced against its frame as they held her upright. "Thanks for seeing me home," Sam said, her smile a lot more inviting than she had originally planned it to be. "I'd invite you in, but I'm sharing the room with my family. Things might get a little, you know, awkward."

"Yeah," Paul said, his lips close to Sam's, teasingly coy as he spoke nose to nose with her. "I know all about those kinds of situations."

"Maybe you could stop by tomorrow?" Sam offered, her lips hungry for the teasing kiss that Paul was now threatening her with. "Are you staying far from here?"

"No," Paul said. He pressed his forehead against Sam's, the soft sweat of his brow soaked into Sam's bangs. "In fact, you could say we're neighbours."

"How so?"

With his arms roughly placed on her shoulders, Paul suddenly ripped Sam away from the motel room door and slammed her against the one directly across from it. Sam didn't have a moment to catch her breath as Paul's strong hands grabbed her wrists and pinned her fiercely against the door. She struggled to break free, but he was as strong as he looked, with a practised understanding of how to hold down an unco-operative suspect. "I got the room next door. Coincidence? Actually, no."

"What the hell are you doing?" Sam shouted.

"I should ask you that first," Paul said, increasing the pressure on Sam's wrists. She twisted them, trying to break away, only to earn a choke hold on her neck when she freed her right hand. Of course this night was going to end in violence, the bitter sting of betrayal her companion once again. She searched the ice blue of Paul's eyes for any hint of the demonic, but there was nothing but the cold realism of angry humanity staring back at her. Humans. They were always the worst.

"Why was your sister trying to kill me?"

Sam faltered in her struggle, her brow furrowing even as Paul dug the heel of his fist deep against the hollow of her shoulder.

"I saw her reflected on the surface of the car, before the dust kicked up," Paul said, his hand keeping a firm grip on Sam's throat. "So what was the game? Murder me and steal my wallet? You wouldn't have gotten much, I didn't come here with anything to lose, let alone win."

"That's not what it was about," Sam protested. Inspiration cruelly taunted her. "It was because you said you knew Simon."

Paul pressed his hip tight against hers, keeping her knees locked with his own should she get any ideas of how to escape with a good kick. "Just why would that make your sister want to kill me?"

"Because...Because Simon destroyed our family." Sam swallowed deeply, feeling the impressions of Paul's fingers on her throat. "He's an addict. He doesn't listen to anybody and he just does whatever the hell he wants, and hurts whoever the hell he wants. He's stubborn and selfish." A choked sob escaped Sam as she lay trapped in confession. "He's done some things that just can't be fixed, no matter how hard we try."

Paul's grip on Sam's throat loosened at this. He narrowed his gaze as though expecting this to be a trick, only to soften when he took in Sam's obvious distress. "That bad, huh?"

"He's a fucking monster," Sam bitterly replied.

The tight grip on Sam loosened as Paul stepped back, his arms now braced against the door frame, caging Sam within them. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Why the hell would you even come on to me like you did if you knew my sister tried to kill you?" Sam asked. She rubbed at the bruise now beginning at her shoulder from Paul's rough handling. "You put yourself at risk for nothing."

"Untrue," Paul said. He dared to brush a wet lock of hair from Sam's brow, his fingers deftly tucking it behind her ear. "I came to Vegas on a specific mission, and while I got what I needed, there you were, this...incredible loose piece that had run headlong away from the pattern. You brought the most beautiful chaos in your wake. How could I not be drawn to you?"

"You don't even know me," Sam said.

Paul leaned close, his lips touching hers as he stole a kiss that left Sam's insides melted.

"I'm an observant guy, Sam. I know that only one of two things are going to happen," Paul said. He placed another teasing kiss on Sam's forehead. "You are either going to go back to your motel room, and forget that you and I had ever spent any time together or..."

"Or?"

"Or you come into my room. Willingly."

"Why would I do that?"

Paul towered over her, his hands curled into fists as he braced himself against the door, her neck bitten softly as he teased the growing bruise on her shoulder with his tongue.

"Because I'm going to fuck you so senseless you won't even remember your own name."

///

"Soft or hard?"

Sam choked on her coffee. She dabbed at the spill with her napkin while the waitress impatiently waited for Sam to complete her order. "I beg your pardon?" Sam asked.

"Your eggs, sweetheart. How do you want 'em?"

"Over easy," Paul answered for Sam. He picked at his piece of toast, the blackened bread inedible. He tried to fix it with a helping of jam from a plastic packet, but the breakfast condiment did little to make the meal palatable. Paul pushed his plate away, his fingers snatching a greasy french fry as an afterthought. He stretched out on the booth seat across from Sam, the broken mini-juke box at their table permanently set to play old Pat Boone tunes.

That night had certainly had its moments, not the least of which was Paul's assumption that going into his motel room had meant Sam was wandering off the script, journeying into territory unknown. Sure, there was the physical aspect of this which was true, but diving into a situation that she really shouldn't have wasn't. Lately, it was opposite day every day with Sam Winchester. If she was expected to take one route, she'd always take the other. Which, in a way, completely went against Paul's chaotic philosophy. You couldn't fool with fate if even the wrong decision kept your own pattern knit tight.

Her cell phone buzzed again, and Sam pulled it out of her jeans pocket to stare at it in her palm. Dean, of course.

"You don't have to answer that," Paul reminded her.

A plate of greasy over easy eggs and a side of toasted rye were placed before Sam. She tossed the still buzzing cell phone beside her plate, and picked at the sad breakfast fare. Memories of Josh and the hatchery ruined her appetite. With an annoyed sigh at herself, she picked up the buzzing phone and hit the talk button. Dean's voice, high pitched and hysterical as ever, screamed out loud enough for anyone near their table to hear.

"Sam! Sam, you have to listen!"

"Dean, I hate this as much as you do." Lie. Damn. Just what was Paul doing with his foot beneath the table? If he kept it up he was going to have to follow her to the men's room. Getting pummelled with her back against the cold steel of a dirty washroom stall was the kind of hardcore you didn't easily forget. Especially if it was a repeat performance. Oh man, did Paul just take off his shoe? "We're heading on the highway in a minute, and there won't be any signal. So stop panicking and wait until we get back from the observatory."

But Dean's voice dropped in volume, genuine concern quickly replacing her hysteria. "It's about Bobby, Sam," she said.

"I told you my opinion on the matter."

"No, Sam, you don't get it." Dean's voice was firm, but it still held a fearful tremor. "The Trickster demon got him. I was in such a panic when he left, and I kept calling him, and naturally he wasn't going to answer. I figured he was just pissed, you know? But when I saw his car was still in the lot, and he was supposed to have left an hour ago, I got a bad feeling." Dean let out a shaky breath. "So I called his home number and I got this message."

Sam was quiet as Dean played the recording. She pushed Paul's foot off of her thigh, and turned in her seat, all attention riveted to Bobby's answering machine.

"Hey there, ladies. Just wanted to let you know that even though you tried to kill me, I'm not going to hold it against you. At least, not until you come and get your Uncle Bobby back, then we can discuss how that all goes down. Because, I'm thinking, it would be one heck of a great ride, you two girls, me, a great big warm waterbed. No matter what way you look at it, it's got to beat dying, right? Besides, we could give your clueless angel a few pointers along the way. I bet your little sister Sammy could teach him a thing or two. Man oh man, that little slut has skillz...Anyway, head on down to the warehouse on 4th and Vine Street. What's that Bobby?" There was a howl of tortured pain at this. Bobby swore, his voice shaking with rage and torment. The Trickster's voice tsked as it came back. "Now that's just for the sickies. Seems your daddy substitute wants some sugar, too. See you soon. Girls."


	7. Chapter 7

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: seven

Rating: R (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam/omc that looks like Hugh Dillon (w00t!), genderswap, Trickster, etc.

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke. Not even if he had a sex change), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.

Summary: The boys figure out why they've become girls, but the Trickster knows way more than what he lets on. What happens in Vegas hunts you down and refuses to let you forget it. Just ask Sam Winchester. Both he and she can tell you all about it.

Note: Feedback is love! Even if you're telling me you hate it!

a lingering fringe--chapter seven

"Bobby needs us, Sam," Dean's voice implored of her. "Where are you?"

"I'm at the diner two blocks from the motel," Sam said, ignoring the concentrated effort Paul was making to appear nonchalant at this admission. "I'll see you in five minutes." She slapped the cell phone shut, her wrist pressed tight against the prim line of her mouth, the grimy window of the diner letting in spotted rays of morning sunlight that lay pooled in dirty circles on the surface of the table between them.

Paul's coffee was getting cold. "This is my last day here," he reminded her. "I get my flight at three o'clock, and it's back to February in Alberta." He gave the swirls in his coffee a wan smile. "I was kind of hoping of keeping up the heat for at least a few more hours."

"I'm sorry," Sam said, genuinely meaning it. She pocketed her cell phone as the Impala came into view, its sleek black body nearly obscured by the brown clouds of filth on the window.

"You don't have to go," Paul said.

"Of course I do," Sam replied.

"No. You don't." Paul sighed, his coffee pushed away from him, the handle of the mug kissing Sam's own. "I get the whole family is everything deal with you, but there's something to be said for making them deal with their own demons."

Sam bristled at this. "You don't understand. It's a family emergency, I can't just abandon my sister, or my uncle." She'd done that once before, puffed full of ego and high on demon juice, and look at what it had gotten them. A one way ticket to the obliteration of life, the universe and everything.

Paul's voice was soft against the dirty gloom of the diner. "You're holding onto a pattern, and if anything is going to change in your life, you need to start getting rid of those things that have you trapped. Like running to your sister's aid at first opportunity. Or living in fear of what Simon might do next."

"You don't understand," Sam said, pocketing the cell phone into the back pocket of her jeans. She stood up, not waiting for Dean to honk the horn, her battle weary soul fractured and uncertain. Paul strung his arm around her waist and pulled him close to where he was sitting, his face buried just beneath her breasts. His hands roamed, grazing their periphery, his lips placing a teasing bite on the beginning of her belly. "I guess the next time I see you will be a cold day in hell," he promised.

"You've got my cell number," Sam said. She hesitated before breaking free, the small embrace of her palms as she lightly caressed Paul's head interrupted by the rude honking of the Impala.

"I have to go."

"No. You don't."

She parted from him, refusing to endure the judgemental tapping of the waitress's nails as she pretended to read the classifieds in the morning paper. Paul was hunched over the table at their booth, his hands clasped tight together as though in earnest prayer.

"I'm...I think I...I really like you, Sam."

Sam paused at the door of the diner, a pain she hadn't felt since Jess stabbing at her soul in all kinds of concentrated hurt. Without saying another word, Sam left Paul and his quiet chaos behind in favour of her sister and the path that so stubbornly held them hostage.

Dean waved her over the second she opened the diner's door, honking on the horn again if only to press the point further that choice had little to do with the Winchester existence. Sam fought the urge to look over her shoulder, knowing that Paul was hunched over his coffee, his large thoughts reshaping the circumference of the cup, mentally inverting and reshaping its exact measurements, until the mug became the donut, and then with one figure eight twist became a mug again. Cosmic topology defined by breakfast. Paul would butter his toast with the handle of his knife, just to illustrate the point.

She was going to miss him.

Sam silently slid into the passenger seat of the Impala, wheels skidding against asphalt as Dean sped out onto the main road. The early morning hour hadn't many patrons, according to the deserted appearance of the streets. Dean's foot was heavy on the gas, and she cursed when her black flip flops slid off, her heels dug in deep to prevent it from happening again. "So here's the plan," Dean said, bringing their saga back into focus. "I brought Cas along for some extra ammo. We leave him in the car, and we head in ourselves, making like we don't have any back up. Determine where Bobby is holed up, but we don't go to him right away. I say we call out the Trickster first, make him reveal all his little reality morphing crap, let him think he's got the upper hand." Dean made a sharp turn, hurtling Castiel against the back passenger window. The angel made a silent howl of pain as he rubbed his bruised shoulder.

"Once he starts getting cocky, and that'll be soon, you know how that Trickster bastard is, we go with a few rounds of rock salt. You know, make him think we're rusty and too damned tired to keep at it like we used to. Then, just when he's ready to kill us off, we bring in the big gun." She pointed with her thumb to the back seat, where Castiel was looking unwell and dishevelled. "There's our 'gotcha'."

Sam only half listened. She rested her forehead on the cool glass of the passenger window, her eyes shut against the onslaught of red dust that crept over the Impala in a grainy mist. "Sounds great, Dean," she said, uncommitted.

"Of course it does," Dean said, giving Sam an angry sidelong glare. "It's going to save Bobby. Whether we fix our chick flick moment here or not, at least Bobby being safe puts us back on track."

"Back on track to what?" Sam asked.

"To saving the world, of course! Dammit, Sam, where the hell are you? It's like ever since that night at the bar you've been all, I don't know, disconnected."

Sam wouldn't answer, keeping her emotions buried deep as they violently turned to the right, a thick wall of desert dust obscuring her view. Dean's plan had more than a few holes, but Sam wasn't about to start repairing them. If anything, the hopeless feeling that throbbed deep and unrelenting within her being could use a few stumbling blocks to fall into in this adventure. By late afternoon, Paul would be on a plane, heading far, far north, farther than they had ever travelled. If she survived this particular run-in or not, the outcome would be the same. The intelligent, interesting and downright deviant in all the right ways Paul Nash was to be lost to Sam Winchester forever.

A shame, really. Because, when she thought hard about it, she really liked him, too.

The Impala screeched to a screaming stop, the wheels leaving long black lines on the cracked surface of the side road. Tin warehouses loomed around them, their creaky corrugated walls gently conversing with the desert breeze. Not a soul was present, a fact that gave Sam some measure of hope. Demons on a war mission loved to make sure lots of innocent lives were involved. The Trickster's choice of meeting suggested he wasn't looking for a real fight.

This didn't stop Dean from loading up her shotgun full of rock salt, however. She tossed Sam another gun, this one full of blessed bullets that Castiel had marked with enochial etchings. "We're not letting that bastard get away," Dean promised. "Not this time."

///

The address of the warehouse where Bobby was being held prisoner had a distinctive odour, Sam noted, and it certainly wasn't sulphur. A soft, flowery scent that had an underlying hint of patchouli beckoned them in, the caress of dusty mist pooling around their ankles as they opened the creaking entrance and stepped inside. Their path was lit by candle pillars placed strategically in parallel lines along the concrete floor, where they meandered for several feet before suddenly separating into a wide circle. Flames were dangerously close to the hem of red silk that draped the large, circular bed now the ending focus of the path of candles. Two candelabras were placed behind it, the flames creating just enough light to reveal the scattering of rose petals over the top of the red silk coverlet.

"I'm guessing Hugh Hefner is planning on some playmates," Sam said.

"The Trickster's losing his touch," Dean said, shaking her head, her barrel of her shotgun balanced on her shoulder as she took in the lame attempt at a romantic scene. "He ripped this right off of Sister Sluts Do Dracula In Detroit. We fit right in with the ammo, and the camouflage digs. We're the star attractions, Sam. Lesbo sisters ready to take down Dracula while he goes down on them."

"That is disgusting," Sam said, an unwelcome vision of the Trickster as a lame porno Dracula assailing her.

"I didn't think so at the time, but yeah, the story was so implausible. I mean, it was obvious that they weren't sisters, especially since one had a Spanish accent and the other one was Russian. Then the dude playing Dracula was a horrible actor. He could barely talk through the fake plastic teeth." Dean sighed. "Heck of a schlong, though. At least he knew how to put that to good use."

"Okay, let me clarify. *You* are disgusting."

The sentiment was growing in scope as Dean picked up a stray flower petal, which crumbled into fragrant powder in her fist. "You don't think he's serious about this, do you?" Dean asked, worried. "I mean, I know I'm hot and all, but seeing as how the Trickster implied he's going to take us back to our Kansas boyhood home, bodywise, well...Doesn't that mean that, technically, he'd be doing a guy?"

"It doesn't work that way, Dean," Sam impatiently replied. "Just because you have an expectation of becoming a guy doesn't mean you *are* a guy."

"Yeah, I get that, it's just the mindset is there, that's all. If you're just going through the motions to get from point A to point B..."

"I'm not going through *any* motions, Dean."

"I didn't say you were. I'm just saying that if the Trickster is going to get nasty with either of us, with that promise of guyhood hanging in the background, he's not really having sex with a woman, he's having sex with a woman expecting to become a dude in the next few minutes, so, ergo, he's doing a guy."

"I am physically present as a female, and I don't necessarily expect the Trickster to solve our girl trouble, so no, I can't see your convoluted logic."

"So what you're saying is, if the Trickster has sex with you, he's one hundred percent into the chick flick, and will have no gender confusion repercussions despite knowing you as a guy for most of your life." Dean crossed her arms over her ample chest, her expression surly. "I'm not buying it, Sammy."

"You're making one hell of an assumption, Dean."

"Which is?"

"That we're going to have sex with a Trickster demon."

"Whoa, there, little sis. That just ain't gonna happen."

"Believe me, I know."

Their guns were cocked in unison, the barrels aimed in perfect synchronization at the Trickster demon's heart. He stood before them dressed in a silk brocade bathrobe, his hands held high against their unified murderous intent. "Interesting conversation," he said. "Just for the record, I didn't think too hard about the gender issues. I just figured it was an easy way to get laid."

"Yeah, I know," Dean said, proud of herself. "I used to be a guy too, remember?"

"And that hot conversation was just to bait me into your little trap. Wow." The Trickster shook his head in admiration. "It's true what they say. The girls are smarter than the boys."

"We figured it would be a good distraction," Dean said, cocking her head sweetly to one side. The barrel of the gun pressed her point further. "Where's Bobby?"

The Trickster laughed, his bravado brought to the fore. "Nice try, girls, but a few little pinpricks of rocksalt is just the kind of foreplay I was looking for." The mist curling around their feet began to gain density, a gritty sandstorm suddenly erupting upwards, obliterating the red silk coverlet, the mattress shorn by violent winds and abrasive pebbles. Both Dean and Sam turned away from the howling, sandpaper wind, all exposed sections of skin earning a serious case of concrete burns. With a snap from the Trickster's fingers, the winds receded, leaving the sandy mist to curl in a desert sentience at their ankles. "Take your best shot, ladies," the Trickster taunted them. "This little sandstorm of mine will grind your bones into diamonds. A bit low budget on the theatrics, I know, but hey, I figured the Wizard of Oz reference wouldn't be lost on you."

"Actually, it is," Sam said, confused. "What does sand have to do with anything?"

The Trickster shrugged. "A duststorm whisked Dorothy away to the land of Oz."

"No it didn't," Dean said, unreasonably annoyed at the inaccuracies. "A tornado did."

"Duststorm, tornado, same difference."

"No," Sam said. "A tornado is a high air pressure system created by severe changes in temperature, the ensuing residual differences resulting in a typical funnel shape."

"Duststorms are just high winds pushing dirt along," Dean added. "And it was Munchkinland Dorothy landed in, you douchebag, not Oz."

"Thanks for the weather forecast," the Trickster said. "As for the Munchkins, what can I say? I was always more a fan of the flying monkeys." He moved close to Dean, his fingertips grazing the haughty line of her chin. "Now, now, no biting," he said when she cocked her gun at his throat. "I'd play nice if I were you. That is, if you want to see your friend Bobby again, you'll best be getting knowledgeable about other natural disasters." The Trickster held open his arms, the sandy mist rising to meet his outstretched palms. "Like the fiery tempest that happens when a man and a woman get jiggy with it. Or, as in this case, when two women and a hotter than hell fireball burn each other into slow cinders."

Dean let out a disgusted groan. "Oh come on, Sam, I can't even play this anymore."

"I know what you mean, he's so Larry Flint slimy. Ew."

Dean stared up into the heavens, as though searching out inspiration.

"Don't bother asking your angel to come to your rescue," the Trickster warned them. "I made sure to angel proof this place in my own damned blood."

"Oh, we don't need the help of no angels," Dean, sweetly smiling, replied. She shouted to the rooftop. "Yo! Cas! Put some light on the situation!"

There was the surge of a generator, and in seconds the romantic gloom of the warehouse was suddenly awash in bright light, the onslaught enough to make everyone wince against it. The Trickster stood within a pentagram, its charmed circumference riddled with archaic symbols that held him firm within it. Confused, he tested the periphery with his fingertips, earning a burning spark in return.

"It's a projection," Sam explained. "We drew it on a pane of glass and had Cas affix it to the ceiling light."

"You missed a spot on the roof," Dean gleefully added. "Don't go beating yourself up about it, though. In case you did really angel proof the place, we were going to get Jimmy to cut a hole in that green plastic roofing they're so fond of around here. All it took was a pane of glass, some black magic markers and a couple of vice grips and here we are, our own little hex circle slideshow."

"One hundred percent organic human ingenuity," Sam added. "With a touch of girl power thrown in." She didn't even need to ask; Dean met her high-five with a quick slap and a snap.

The Trickster pouted and paced within his shadow cage. "I wouldn't have done either of you bitches anyway," he sneered. "You're too aggressive for my tastes, blondie. And you..." He made a disgusted face at Sam. "Ruby did one hell of a number on your psyche. Makes me feel kind of sorry for you. Believe me, I don't even want to think about the scary shit you're now into."

"Where's Bobby?" Sam asked, getting to the point, her psyche irked at the mention of Ruby.

'I don't have Bobby," the Trickster whined. He swore in protest when Castiel peeked through the open door, the symbols secretly painted on the warehouse's outer surface forbidding his entry. "All I really wanted to do was ball your girlfriend!" the Trickster shouted to him.

"Forget it," Dean said. "You know as well I do that angels are gender blind."

"That may be so, but Jimmy in there is pretty pissed at me. Hey, James! Try an edition of Chatelaine next time--Make sure you read it for the articles!"

"...sonofabitch..." Jimmy muttered.

"He is subletting to an angel," Dean reminded the Trickster. She uncocked her shotgun and balanced it on her shoulder, her pose decidedly Lara Croft in nature. "It might not be a good idea to taunt him. Your smiting might come in an extra-'splody bits flavour." She stepped closer to the periphery of the circle, her breasts standing at attention and definitely taking all of her prey's. "If you didn't call us here for a little two on one, then you'd better have a damn good secondary reason."

The Trickster pressed his palms together, his steepled fingers pressed tight against his lips as he sadly sighed. "I hate having to say this," he said, keeping his eyes firmly entrenched on Dean's cleavage. "But I have the magic formula that's going to turn the incredibly hot Winchester sisters back into the lacklustre Winchester brothers."

"Me and the girls are listening," Dean said.

The Trickster's eyes slowly left their inspection of her chest to meet Sam's more nervous disposition. "It's a very simple procedure," the Trickster offered, his gaze never leaving Sam's. "Trusting, of course, that you are both still virgins."

"Yeah, whatever, out with it," Dean said.

Sam shifted nervously where she stood, her head shyly turning away from the Trickster's scrutiny. "Define...'virgin'..." she said.

"Sam?" Dean's eyes were wide.

"Nah, I'm just shitting you," the Trickster said, Sam's sigh of relief not missed by a shocked Dean. "There's no magic formula. All you have to do to be boys again is just click your heels four times together and say, as loudly as you can, "That's not my name. That's not my name. That's not my..."

"I want to kill him," Dean said.

The Trickster sighed, his hands on his hips, his tone one of a highly educated professor trying to educate a poorly trained monkey. "It amazes me how you didn't see this one coming. I mean, let's face it, Sam, you aren't exactly one hundred percent human to start with. Your real daddy floats through fifty percent of your DNA and that's one heck of a big chunk of your humanity snuffed out like so much smoke. And don't go thinking you're off the hook here, Dean. You were dead and buried and your corpse was lying in the ground, rotting away. Your soul spent forty years in Hell, before you were stolen by that sanctimonious filth waiting on your every move. All scrubbed and clean like a newborn--better, even."

"What's your point?" Dean asked.

"The point is, girls, you can't touch the supernatural without it giving a little back." The Trickster paced his circle, searching earnestly for a tiny shadow of weakness within it. He found none. "Doesn't it bother you both, how skilled you've become at fighting us 'monsters'? If I were you, I'd be wondering how that came to be, especially since you two aren't exactly the merely shoot 'em and leave 'em type." He smiled in victory as he glared at them. "Androgyny is the mark of a true magus," he said. "Consider it a hazard of the job."

"You said you know how to fix this," Sam reminded him.

"Aren't you listening to me?" the Trickster snapped in impatience. He sat on the edge of the torn bed, rose petals swirling in circles at his feet. "Your angel should have given you a clue, Dean. In our worlds, there is no male or female, and in this one, we can just as easily swing one way or the other. A meatsuit's a meatsuit as far as any of us are concerned. In your case, just flex a little of that supernatural muscle you've been blessed with and you're free to be her and he."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, frowning.

"It's just like your fairy godmother is trying to tell you," the Trickster replied, his voice suddenly a high pitched vibrato. "All you ever had to do was want it badly enough. Just click your heels together and make a big, big wish..." The Trickster's face fell at their increased confusion. "A couple of kiegels ought to do it."

"I can turn back into a guy if I clench my butt cheeks?" Dean asked.

"Dean," Sam said, trying gently to explain. "You have to use a muscle that's a little, well...Elsewhere."

Dean was about to ask a further question only to suddenly understand. "Oh," she said.

"What is a Kiegal?" Castiel, or possibly Jimmy, asked, his head still peeking in the front door.

"Look it up on Google," Dean said. She braced herself and stretched, her body sighing as it morphed into a far more familiar shape. Dean the man was now happily checking out his newly flattened chest, wider shoulders and ill-fitting blue jeans. "Ah, much better!"

"Not really," Jimmy muttered from behind the door, his face long with disappointment.

Sam flexed then shrugged into her own male skin, the effort putting a strange kink in his neck. He rubbed at it with the back of his large palm, his shoulders rolled to their proper width and positioning, the socket crackling like double jointed knuckles at the effort. "This feels so weird," he said, surprised by the sudden brevity of his voice. Dean was busy adjusting the fit of his jeans, as promised, but Sam remained immobile beside his brother, confusing questions about their physical selves swirling in the same unhappy eddies as the grainy mist that crept hungrily around their ankles. He checked his memory of the nights before, and was inwardly sick at the fact that no, manly man Sam didn't regret it half as much as he felt he should have.

"It's good to be back," Dean said, palms thumped on his chest in a good show of machismo. Sam wasn't so relieved, and he opted to keep his uneasiness at the situation to himself. The Trickster, bastard demon that he was, instantly latched onto Sam's reticence, his cruel, twisted smile pulling the young hunter into his newest game of emotional hide and seek.

"What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay here. I know the brochure says so, but those advertising execs are such liars. I should know, my meatsuit was one for nearly twenty years." He was cocky as he paced his prison, the shadows of various symbols bruising the exposed sections of skin on his chest. He pulled his silk brocade robe tighter around him, preventing further injury. "Your friend Bobby is right, Sam. You sure do know how to pick them."

Sam didn't want to be baited, but it was Dean who took it, his testosterone upped to level eleven. "What the hell are you talking about?" Dean asked. He turned on his brother. "You got something to say, Sammy?"

"Oh, he won't tell you anything. He's sworn himself to secrecy." The Trickster tutted at this, and then cursed as a shadow symbol met his cheek and neatly cut it. "Let me go and I'll tell you what Sammykins has introduced to you."

"Not a chance," Dean replied.

"Frankly, I'm feeling a lot safer locked in here," the Trickster replied, his cocky bravado beginning to wither. "You go ahead and check out the morning news when we're done. What he did to that poor Maneater at that diner. Tsk, tsk...You're not safe here, boys and girls. What he did to her he's going to do to you, too."

Sam contemplated this a long moment, his memory of the past week slowly morphing into an unexpected conclusion. "You're talking about Paul," Sam said. He frowned as he looked at the now shivering form of the Trickster, his twisted sneer rubberized into odd shapes as he expressed his distaste of Sam's understanding.

"You're afraid of him," Sam realized.

Dean kicked at the sentient mist that curled around his foot, the tiny grains of sand hugging tight onto his now too small black flip-flop sandals. They dug into the knuckles of his toes, causing tiny pinpricks that bled like fresh mosquito bites. He brushed at them with his hands, and the grains of sand swarmed like fruit flies around his leg.

"Why would he be afraid of Paul?" Dean asked. He patted more of the sand off of his knee, the tiny grains crawling over his palm in a pattern he hadn't seen since his grade eight science class. A large clump of sand lay in the middle of his hand, while several smaller clumps surrounded it in a ticklish orbit. His teacher, Mrs. Menckil had taught them something about it, but back then his horny pubescent self couldn't concentrate because she was only twenty-three and even if she was a physics geek, she was blonde and busty and hot. Adams, Dean thought, searching his memory hard. Elections. He shook the grains of sand off, scattering them into chaos.

"Which came first, Sammy?" the Trickster taunted. "The chicken or the egg?"

This was no idle threat. The pattern that had played out on Dean's palm was unmistakable to Sam. A sick well of hurt and fury overrode his good sense, and without consulting his brother first, Sam cocked his shotgun and fired a round of enochial blessed bullets directly at the chest of the Trickster. The demon's meatsuit was obliterated into the same sand that now suddenly collapsed into inert lifelessness, the only stir that remained being a natural breeze that crept in through the open warehouse door. There was a good chance the Trickster was dead and sent back to hell, but Sam had been wrong so many times before. He let out a shaky breath, not realizing he'd been holding it.

"Why did you do that?" Dean shouted at his brother. He grabbed Sam roughly by the shoulder and was pushed off just as brutally. "He was going to tell us something important!"

"We need to get out of here," Sam said, refusing to tell Dean more. He could feel his brother's furious glare on his back, but what the Trickster revealed was far too important for hurt feelings and a lingering sense of betrayal to matter. Atoms and electrons. With one shake of his brother's hand their pattern was obliterated.

The coded message was more than clear. Paul Nash, for reasons as yet unknown, was a ticking nuclear bomb.


	8. Chapter 8

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: eight

Rating: R (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam/omc that looks like Hugh Dillon (w00t!), genderswap, Trickster, etc.

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke. Not even if he had a sex change), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.

Summary: The boys are now boys again, but you can't deny an advantage when you see one. Just ask Jimmy's opinion on the matter. What happened in Vegas wants to hunt you down and kill you. Too bad you gave that freaky chick Sam Winchester your cell number.

Note: Feedback is love! Even if you're telling me you hate it!

a lingering fringe--chapter eight

"I wouldn't worry about it, it's obvious it was a trick. That's why they call him the 'Trickster', Sam. He pretended to be Bobby to smoke us out, and it's not like this tactic hasn't been used plenty of times before." Dean punched the air as he headed towards the Impala, his fingers splayed wide in the victory sign. "Yeah, baby! The boys are back in town!"

Sam wasn't celebrating, and truth be told, Dean was still angry with his brother for smoking the Trickster without a second thought. Dean's shadow crept along the corrugated tin walls of the warehouses as he headed for the Impala, Sam's own shadow elongated and somehow darker. Castiel was already in the back seat--No, correction, a very long faced *Jimmy* was now pouting as he slouched against the white leather interior, his bottom lip so pushed forward he could have swallowed his own nose. Sam slid into the passenger seat, and Dean, making sure everything was adjusted just right--How did that extra padding suddenly feel like it was getting in the way? Oh well, at least his back felt better--slipped into the driver's seat, his hands tight on the steering wheel. There was a long moment of silence as everyone present realigned themselves. Jimmy stubbornly refused to meet Dean's gaze even through the rear view mirror.

"Okay, I don't get it," Dean said, fingers tapping impatiently on the steering wheel. "We spent one week as girls, Sam. One freaky week that I'm not keen on repeating, no matter how much Jimmy begs."

"Aw, come on, Dean," Jimmy whined. He held out his hands, balancing invisible grapefruits. "They were so beautiful. I'm going to miss them so much."

"You didn't even get to enjoy them," Dean reminded him.

"Oh, I did," Jimmy replied, sighing dreamily. He pressed his palms against his cheeks, his imagination heading for a far happier place than alone in the backseat of the Impala. He wasn't enamoured one iota in this Dean Winchester, this good looking guy who watched way too much porno than was healthy and who smelled of day old cheeseburgers. No, that wasn't an insult to himself, because damn, there was nothing in this world more manly smelling than the aroma of day old burger grease. If they bottled that stuff up and sold it under the name "Man Smell" it would fly off the shelves and put Old Spice out of business, Dean was sure of it.

"Bobby sent us a text message," Sam said as he checked his cell phone. "He couldn't get his car started this morning, that's why it was still on the lot. He says he went by the motel room, but we'd already checked out."

Dean punched his steering wheel, refusing to let his testosterone induced happy mood wane beneath the moody seriousness of his passengers. Sure, he knew what Sam was thinking, those narrowed eyes and impatient sighs said it all. He was thinking of how they'd been on a wild goose chase thanks to that Trickster demon, and how they'd wasted valuable time in their hunt for saving the goddamned universe. Or, he was thinking of how stupid it was to waste the guy just when he was about to spill the beans on some potentially useful info. He sure hoped his little brother thought it was stupid. Stupid.

Of course, he could also be thinking what Dean was thinking which was, "What about Bobby? He's into all this magic mumbo-jumbo and stuff too. Does that mean Bobby can shed the ball cap and put on some lip gloss and pop in a Barbara Streisand tape in the eight deck?"

Dean hoped this wasn't the case. Because damn, the very thought made him dry heave.

"Bobby was right, Dean," Sam said, his head turned towards the passenger window, his words muffled within the tight fist he balanced against his mouth. "I sure know how to pick them. The Trickster demon told me all he was going to, in a way that I alone would understand. I have to level with you, Dean." He wouldn't look at his brother. "Paul Nash is a problem."

Dean snorted at this. "Get over it, he is not." Shaking his head at this folly, Dean put the key in the ignition and started up the Impala, her motor purring gleefully into life. "I watered down his beer with holy water. I threw a blessed crucifix at him. I doused his room with salt. I got him to play hacky sack with a hex bag...Hell, I even stabbed his thigh with a sharpened lead pencil just to make sure he didn't bleed black like a ghoul. By the way, thanks for convincing him not to press assault charges. Though, when I think back, it would have been kind of cool to be imprisoned with hot hookers."

"I'm serious, Dean," Sam said, not letting up. "The Trickster was actually scared of him."

"Demons lie, Sam," Dean hotly reminded him. "He's pulling your chain in the cruelest way possible, and that was where he found it. Don't worry about Paul, it's not like you're going to be hanging on him anymore anyway. Just lose his number and move on, that's my advice." Dean let out a sad sigh as he turned left onto the main highway. "Imprisoned with Vegas hookers. Damn. I picked one hell of a bad life not to come back as a lesbian."

"I'm not losing his number," Sam stubbornly replied.

Uh oh. Sam had that stubborn air about him, the one that caused a thorn of dread to move its way painfully through Dean's gut. There was a big old chunk of Ruby flavoured hate burning through that boy, and Paul Nash was dangerously close to feeling some of that fry-up. "Not a good idea, Sam," Dean said, trying to deflect some of that bad feeling with simple logic. "Besides, he only knows you as Samantha, not Samuel. Seeing as how we're going to let that special muscle wither up, as far as I'm concerned, the whole thing's a non-issue."

Sam's jaw was set, his teeth slowly grinding as he stared out the passenger window. "I'm not letting anything on me atrophy, I know an advantage when I see one. I don't care what you say, Dean, I'm putting my flexible gender into my arsenal. It can be a hell of a weapon, when used properly."

Dean kept his focus on the road, not wanting to think on the deeper meaning Sam had placed on his words. No, it wasn't demon blood, and it wasn't exactly unnatural considering just how much of their humanity had been compromised over the years. It just felt like one more nail in their coffin, was all. A constant reminder of the road that couldn't be travelled back.

Their angelic passenger in the back seat leaned forward, his face far too relaxed in expression to be Castiel. "Just for the record, I am in complete agreement with Sam, and am all for you bringing out your weapons any time you feel like it."

"Jimmy, I didn't ask your opinion. Where the hell is Cas?"

"If you're looking for *that* one's opinion, it's pointless," Jimmy reminded Dean. He slumped back into the back seat, his legs and arms spread wide, his trenchcoat open and sloppy. "You have no idea how frustrating it has been for me, trying to explain to him. Obviously, Heaven doesn't have a problem with you switching into women, so I think it can be counted as a, I don't know, perk of the job." Dean was about to make a very vocal argument against this, one that involved his knee and Jimmy's overly intellectual groin, but the interior of the Impala rocked with a low, guttural sound that could only express one very important, necessary and one hundred percent human need. Jimmy rubbed his stomach, his face pained.

"I'm freaking starving," he said.

Dean sighed, eyeing the exit off the highway that was three stops ahead. Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I didn't have time to even eat the breakfast I ordered," he reminded Dean. "Two sips of coffee, that was it."

"Okay, okay, we're hungry, I get it," Dean said, pulling off the highway and heading towards the first grocery store he could see on the horizon. "But we're not buying junk this time. No way, no burritos, no french fries, none of that gross shit. Organic all the way. Fruits and veggies and stuff. I now have two rules when it comes to food. One, no more buying meals at filthy roadside burger wagons with more flies than meat. Two, and this is important." Dean swallowed, bad memories coming unbidden to his sense of taste. "Nothing is going in that isn't safe to come out. Got it?"

"Yeah, I guess," Sam said, confused. He shrugged. "Apples and oranges and lettuce. Sure."

Dean parked the Impala in the lot of the Trader Joe's, and waited for the engine to stop humming before giving a full explanation to his uneasy passengers. The grocery store was packed to capacity from the look of the people milling in and out of it, hemp bags and hybrid vehicles the order of the day. Sure, his body was just screaming for a cheeseburger, and his stomach was shouting "Tempeh Palace? Are you on some kind of organic fucking *crack*?", but Dean refused to listen. "As far as I'm concerned, we got enough poison in our systems," Dean said. "For once, what we eat is one hundred percent in our control. Heavenly burgers be damned. I'm getting me some arugula."

///

Dean knew he'd made the right decision when it became clear that the majority of women who shopped at Trader Joe's were single hotties with a side of free love sensibility thrown in. Take this one little sweetheart in aisle seven, with her long brown patchwork skirt and her henna dyed tresses that hung in red and brown tinted waves to her waist. The light blue of her tank top sort of clashed, colour-wise, but Dean didn't care. The point was, her girls were ripe and round and fresh for the picking. Well, maybe not as exceptional as Dean's own could be, but hell, this wasn't exactly a competition, right? She turned her head and smiled prettily at his scrutiny. Oh yeah, he was already in.

She reached out to pick up a package of maxi-pads made from fully recyclable materials, a mistake he simply had to rectify. Dean reached into her cart and placed the package back on the shelf, giving her another brand instead. "This one is way more absorbent, and it doesn't itch your crotch like the other one does," Dean helpfully explained. He pointed at the proud boasting of their key natural ingredient. "Bamboo fibres. When you're flowing like a river, nothing dams it up better."

"Get away from me, you disgusting freak!" she said, not exactly grateful for the advice. Geez, some people.

A package of chips was thrown into the grocery cart, and Dean removed Sam's choice of lunch, replacing it instead with an instant version of brown rice and miso soup. He did a quick scan of the cart's ingredients. Apples. Oranges. Lettuce. Okay, so he wasn't exactly all that knowledgeable about what real food looked like, so he just kind of ran with what at least resembled stuff that was healthy. Like this stuff on the shelf, here. Ghee. Sounded foreign. It had to be good for you. He put the large bottle in his cart, figuring it looked enough like butter to be thickly spread on toast. Still, the tofu was out. He might have tortured innocent people in Hell, but there was no way he'd go darkside with the bean curd.

Sam tapped Dean on the shoulder, a cell phone pressed close against his cheek. He tossed a candy bar into the cart, which Dean angrily tossed back onto the shelf. "It's Bobby," Sam said, handing Dean the cell phone. "We have to get back to the diner we were at this morning, pronto." Sam frowned as he took in the contents of Dean's cart. "Why are you buying a bottle of lard?"

"Yo, Bobby," Dean said into the phone. "Good to hear you're alive and well."

"I heard about your little adventure this morning," Bobby said, in far better humour than he had left them. "Good to know John still has his favourite sons back on track."

"What the hell, Dean?" Sam began rifling through the grocery cart, unhappy with his brother's choices. He held up a pink package with a cartoon kitten printed on its surface. "Strawberry Pocky? Seriously?"

Dean held his hand over the phone. "Cas wanted them."

Sam sulked as he went through more of the contents, his unhappiness increased as he held up the two packages of lentils and brown rice.

"Where's all the chips I put in here? Where's my candy bar?"

"Like I said to Sam," Bobby continued through the cell phone. "You boys got to get your keisters to that diner. I just back from there myself, there's a detective by the name of George working it, a good buddy of mine thanks to some work I done for him down Rio way. He'll give you clearance to go and check it out. I gotta tell ya...It ain't nothing like I ever seen before. And you know I seen plenty."

Castiel showed up in their aisle, noisily munching from the small bag of cat food in his hand. Science Diet. New salmon flavour. Low in magnesium and ash. That was just great. Figuring it was probably healthier than most of the stuff they'd been eating in the past, Dean wordlessly took it from him and added it to the now completed grocery order in his cart. At least Cas wasn't going to hork up a hairball.

"We're just checking out now, and we're on our way, Bobby," Dean said.

There was an uneasy sigh on the other end of the line. "I gotta congratulate you boys on the resurfacing," Bobby said. "It is mighty fine to hear from you both, and I have to apologize if I wasn't as, hell, understanding as maybe I should of been. The how and why of it still gets me, though, you know what I'm saying?" There was an uncomfortable pause on Bobby's part. "Look, boy or girl, it don't matter to me. It just goes without saying, you all be careful with this one. It's sticking all kinds of wrong in my craw."

///

The news reporters had hit the place hard, the crime scene a mess of organized chaos reigned in with yellow caution tape. Deep within the sea of news cameras and TV crew vans, Bobby's orange car was only barely visible. With his ball cap and his unkempt plaid flannel shirt, he fit right in with the camera crews, and if one wasn't paying too much attention it could easily be assumed he was another bloodthirsty member of the media frenzy. Dean parked the Impala across the street, Sam and Castiel following behind him as he gave Bobby a quickly acknowledged nod.

There was a scrubbed looking guy in a black suit, but he wasn't pretty enough to be a reporter. "This here's Detective George Ramos," Bobby said. "He'll give you the grand tour."

"Heck of thing," George Ramos said as they all headed into the diner, its windows busted out, the smell of rotting blood thick on the acrid desert air. He sipped at his Styrofoam cup of water, an old trick to keep the bile down. George looked a little seasoned to Dean, and he didn't like the hint that he was having a bit of trouble keeping his breakfast in his digestive tract. "The press is all over it on account of us finding a similar scene earlier this afternoon. Some black tie bar down on the edge of the Vegas strip."

Sam gave Dean a knowing look. "Run by a redheaded cougar, with long red fingernails?"

"Funny you should say so," George said, deadpan since he already knew the score. "Long red fingernails are the only evidence we have belonging to the killer. Found ten of them, fake ones, lying on the floor on top of the pile."

They walked into the diner, the stench overpowering Sam, making him gag. The remains of the cook, identifiable solely by the blood drenched white cotton cap and apron he wore, were scattered across the surface of the diner's counter. Fingers were shoved into the soda fountain. Entrails lay slimy and green with mucous and bile in a messy cake display case. Part of the poor bastard's face had been tossed on top of a plate, his eyes peering sightlessly back at them like a form of grisly garnish.

.

Castiel puzzled over the small bell sitting on the window shelf that gave a view of the tiny kitchen. His finger tapped it lightly. Ping! Order's up.

"Maneater," Sam said, his breath filtered through his sleeve, the vile stench of human rot a difficult endurance for even the most stoic of stomachs.

"She certainly ate them up back at the bar. Good thing we weren't to her taste." Dean flicked a glutinous piece of the cook off of a stool and seated himself at the counter. "Let me guess, at the bar you found a guy in a suit missing his limbs and his entrails are spewed all over the place like they were used to paint the walls."

"Pretty much," Detective George Ramos said, looking decidedly queasy.

Dean rubbed a tired palm across his jaw. It had been one hell of a busy day so far, and it didn't look like it was going to let up. Man, this place was greasy. For some reason unknowable to him, the plaque in his arteries craved a burger, the greasier and cheesier the better. He shook the feeling off, fishing in his pockets for a mint instead.

Maneaters were easy enough to deal with, once you got over the shock of their handiwork. All they had to do was find her lair, douse it with gasoline and set it alight, then draw a few hexes with the ashes on the surrounding walls. Without her hole to hibernate in, she'd wither and die. Simple.

"I don't get it, Bobby," Dean said, clacking on his mint. "Like Sam said, this is a straightforward maneater. Nothing special about this case."

"You didn't take a good look around yet," Bobby growled.

Sam and Castiel were already gathered where Bobby was standing, a semi circle of concern hovering over a large pile of white. Dean approached it with caution, a well of expectation gathering deep within his gut. No, this wasn't good. Not by a long shot.

"Is that...?"

"It's salt," Bobby said. He put his huge hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans, his bottom lip jutted out in sombre thought. "You can see the outline of her body, beneath the clothes. There, where her hands would have been, those fake red nails. George already had the lab test a couple of them out. There's human blood under them all right. Probably the cook's and that other victim back at the bar."

"I don't get it," Sam said. "I've never heard of demons being turned into salt before. It doesn't make sense."

"What about it, Cas?" Dean asked. "This look like angel mojo to you?"

Castiel raised a brow, his awkward posture pushing Sam and Bobby out of the way as he investigated the scene. He ran his fingers through the salt and, to Sam and Dean's mutual disgust, even dared to taste it. "Salt is a form of purification," Castiel explained. "But this method is entirely alien to me. I do not believe angels had any part of this nor, for obvious reasons, were demons involved. There are no symbols, no additional amulets or sacred writings. Nothing can do this."

"Well something obviously did," Dean reminded him.

Castiel continued to move his fingertips through the mounds of salt near where the demon's hand once was. A flicker of something that looked to Dean like fear moved like a shadow across his features, only to fade into the usual, poker-faced stone. "Whoever did this is very powerful. I have known of only one case when someone was turned into a pillar of salt." Castiel gazed up at Sam from his crouched position at the edge of the demon's salt remains. "My Father is the only one capable of this."

"Bullshit," Dean said. Dammit, he was getting sick of this. It was a long, hot day, he'd kill for some red meat and despite his efforts he knew there was no way in hell that some peanut butter and a bit of seaweed was going to do him any good. God came smiting a demon. Just how stupid did Cas think he was?

"I have made no remark concerning your intelligence," Cas said, his angel powered eavesdropping fanning Dean's ire. His face pinched into an expression of deep confusion. "I don't understand what those words mean, and you are shouting them mentally, a very strange skill."

"They're called 'profanity'," Dean said through clenched teeth. "The plural is profanities. Here, listen in, I'll give you a dozen or two more..."

"If even the angels haven't heard of this method, we may be in way over our heads here," Sam observed, pointedly ignoring the angel and human spat in his midst. "I don't know, Bobby, there's just something so antiseptic about this. Regardless of the blood and the stink, it feels like we're standing in someone's weird version of a science experiment." Sam crouched opposite to Castiel, his fingers likewise tracing through the massive mound of salt, across the midsection where her stomach would have been. He found a piece of desiccated meat near the location of her intestines. A chunk of the cook reduced to human jerky. "Her victim wasn't affected at all, not even in death. This was solely an anti-demon weapon."

"So maybe whoever did this is on our side," Dean offered. Sam filtered his fingers through the mound of salt, a small plastic rectangular pin pulled out and handed to Dean for a proper inspection. It was a name tag. The one the waitress/demon had been wearing that morning.

"Bridgette," Dean read aloud. He tapped its edges on his open palm. "I guess this takes care of that hunt. I wonder if we'll get a bill."

"If whoever's doing this has some kind of leverage, we have to get to know them," Bobby firmly advised them. "I don't care if it is God Himself. In my opinion it'd be about time He got involved in this shit storm of His own making."

Sam paused in his searching, his fingers clutching onto the remains of what had been a cigarette, its body burnt down to the filter. He closed his eyes, his hand shaking with this piece of explosive evidence held in his fingertips. "It's Paul's," he confessed. "It was Paul Nash who did this."

"Impossible," Castiel said, immediately dismissive. "I saw no evidence of any supernatural leanings in your human 'friend'. You are mistaken, Sam."

But Sam wasn't convinced. His eyes were glassy with carefully guarded emotion, the cigarette filter clutched hard in his fist as he stood up. "There was no smoking in the diner," Sam said. "He had to go outside when I was here. For there to be a smoked cigarette here means he did this after he'd turned her to salt, and put it out in her remains." Sam choked on his words. "There's traces of ashes near where I found it. You can see it yourself."

Dean rolled the mint he was still sucking around on his tongue. Unfortunately, some things never changed. Like the fact that there were always bigger and better monsters. That his brother had a bad habit of getting up close and personal with them. That betrayal and hurt were hella nasty weapons against a sensitive soul's psyche. The demon hordes had sure taken a page from Ruby's book and ran with it. Dean didn't like the implications of what this was going to mean for Sam.

"I knew there was a reason I didn't like that guy." Bobby swore, and then spit on the ground beside the salted demon. "Where is Paul Nash now?"

"Back in Alberta," Sam said, his jaw a firm line. Anger pulsed thickly through him, a vein in his neck throbbing with every acknowledged level of hurt he felt. He gave Dean a fierce glare. "It's a good thing I didn't lose his number."

Paul must have really got under his skin, Dean thought, not liking Sam's darkly quiet, furious mood. He hadn't seen this kind of boiling under the surface rage since Sam had been hopped up on demon blood and was set to kill Lilith. Dean tried to temper his own rising anger at this. That particular scenario hadn't ended well, either.

"It's February twentieth," Sam reminded them. "I guess we'd better find ourselves some goose down parkas. This is going to be one very long road trip."


	9. Chapter 9

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: nine

Rating: R (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam/omc that looks like Hugh Dillon (w00t!), genderswap, Trickster, etc.

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke. Not even if he had a sex change), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.

Summary: The boys are now boys again, but you can't deny an advantage when you see one. Just ask Jimmy's opinion on the matter. What happened in Vegas wants to hunt you down and kill you. Too bad you gave that freaky chick Sam Winchester your cell number.

Note: Feedback is love! Even if you're telling me you hate it!

a lingering fringe--chapter nine

She watched as the infamous black Impala kicked up cloud of brown dust as it sped away from the diner. Her lips were pressed tight as she sucked on the mint she'd popped in her mouth, a useful tool in keeping the scent of dead human meat off her breath. She kept them in plentiful stock at her bar, especially considering how good the pickings there had been lately. She ran the mint along the surface of her teeth, its round circumference a contrast to the half dozen sharp points that teased the centre of her tongue. Her red claws got to work on the remains of the cook, digging into his body cavity to get at the good stuff. She giggled as she tossed his heart against the far wall of the kitchen, his entrails plopped with gusto on the front counter of the diner. Her nails dug into the side of his face and ripped it in half, and she put the gory mask onto a white dinner plate, mischievously garnishing it with his eyeballs placed close together, like a couple of potates parisienne. She dug deep into his abdomen, relishing the textures and smells of butchery. Like butter and ketchup. Yum.

Nobody had ever told her she shouldn't play with her food.

She was enjoying herself so much, satiated as she was with the last few days feedings, that she didn't notice the first customer of the day was still seated at his booth. Sucking on her finger, mixing a few bits of gooey red tissue and blood in with the peppermint of her candy in her mouth, she sashayed playfully over to him. Holding her order pad aloft, she ripped the top sheet off with a theatrical flourish and let it fall to the table, beside his now empty coffee mug.

"Be sure to leave a big tip," she said.

The fact he had remained while she was busy finishing off what she'd started before her customers arrived--That cook was one big lug. Lots of muscle and fat to wallow in--told her that maybe this fella wasn't as human as he looked. She pushed her cleavage to the fore with blood-soaked hands, leaving manslaughter imprints on the mounds of her mammories. She gave him a wide, flirtatious smile fit to bursting with a set of teeth that would make a great white shark jealous. He didn't seem to mind.

"That girl of yours hangs with the Winchester boys," she said, bloody saliva seeping from the corner of her mouth, to hang in a phlegm drool. "Good thing she didn't let on what you were, or one them would have got you good."

"Is that so?" her customer said, feigning interest. He gave her wan smile, his ice blue eyes taking in her grotesque appearance and all evidence of her murderous guilt. "What is it I'm supposed to be?"

"One of us, of course," the waitress said, bloodsoaked hands now on her curvaceous hips. "You look a little pale in the gills there, stranger. How about a plate, just for yourself? There's plenty of that guy left to go around."

"I'll take a pass," he quietly said, still smiling softly. He tossed a few bills onto the table, the amount clearly three times what the meals had come to. "Keep the change."

This sure did put her hackles up. Nobody did anything for anyone out of the good of their hearts, at least not in her meatsuit's experience or her own demonic knowledge. There was a price to be exacted from this, and there was no way she was going into to debt for anyone, not even a fellow demon who was frankly putrid with humanity.

She gave this cool customer of hers a more concentrated inspection. Good looking guy, shaved head and a nice physique. Very crisp and clean in his pressed black suit jacket and his white, tie-free shirt underneath, with the top three buttons undone. The vintage Doc Martins he wore gave a hint of a wild side, but there wasn't much to go on from the surface. Freaky blue eyes. The colour of snowstorms.

They gave her a shiver.

"So what's your game? If you're a hunter, you're seriously out of luck. I'm still a bit peckish." She narrowed her wide eyes that blinked pools of blood, putting everything in her sights into a red hue. "I always thought you guys were big on the flannel no matter what the weather."

"I'm not a hunter," he assured her.

"You aren't human, neither. You can't be."

He gave her a wan smile at this. "Why are you so sure?"

He stood up, and while she had plenty of ways and means to rip him to shreds and have a party with his entrails, there was still that strange, disconnected fascination he presented. Like static on a bad line. It coursed through the channels of her meatsuit's surface and deeper beneath the skin to the dusty muscles and unused organs within. A pulsing electricity. A magnet that beckoned, that pulled her closer to him in question, a level of fear welling within her that she hadn't felt since she'd crawled out of hell and made good on her promise to chew up humanity in recompense for all the harm the pit had driven into her.

"I know that you've suffered," he said, as if reading her thoughts. "I know things like you lie, and torture, and murder. You think it's your nature, it's what you were fashioned to do. And maybe that's true. But you can't deny that it's a miserable existence."

She shrugged at this. "I get by."

He knew her bluff. He placed a knowing palm on her shoulder, an understanding warmth with the touch. "Not really. You can't participate, not in the way this world is designed. You're forbidden happiness, and joy, and yet it's all around you. A constant reminder of what you can't have. You thought you were getting free, but it doesn't work that way. You're still bound by your urges, and they don't jibe with this place. There's an absence inside of you that you weren't able to acknowledge in the pit. It's driving you mad."

She licked a bloody chunk of the cook off of her palm. "Hell was almost better," she admitted. "At least I knew what I was. But this stupid world of yours, all it does is mix things up. It was so easy before you maggots showed up. There was Heaven..." She spat a bloody piece of human tissue at the mention of it before continuing. "...and there was Hell. Black and white with no grey in between. Simple. We all had our place in the big scheme of things."

"A place is important," her customer acknowledged. "A marker. A name. Names keep us grounded, remind us of who we really are. You can deny a lot of things about yourself, but it's your name that really holds all the weight of your consciousness, it is soaked with your history." He smiled, ice blue eyes hypnotic in their understanding. "I know your name," he said.

The maneater grinned, her shark teeth glinting in the mid-morning sunlight. She pointed at her name tag, black flakes of dried blood shaved off her fingertip. "Bridgette," she said.

The stranger pulled away and lit a cigarette, and she grinned at his calm facade as he took a long drag of it. He thought he was her confidante, she thought with glee. He was just some stupid human after all, one that was going to learn you couldn't bargain with a demon for your life, no matter how much cool indifference you showed them.

"That's the not your real name," he said.

Nah, he had to be bluffing. She faltered, her grin withering slightly, her fingers nervously picking the blood from under her nails with the sharp corner of the name tag. Her meatsuit cut itself on its thumb, but she didn't notice, and the tiny gash didn't bleed. No one knew anyone's real name, like he was saying. Not even Lucifer himself. Stuff like that was kept private. Familiar, sweet anger began to brew inside of her, trumping curiosity. She was going to rip this bastard apart. She was going to feast on his arms and legs and tear his still beating heart apart into the pattern of a daisy.

She reached out to grab him, but he moved too quickly, his lips so close to her ear he could have bitten it off or kissed it. In that split second, she wasn't sure which scenario was going to happen.

Neither. He whispered into her ear the name she'd learned at her unholy birth, its syllables coursing through her bloated, furious body, slowly purifying large sections of her soul. She could feel it as her name hummed through her, in those ice blue eyes, so filled with concern and understanding. Like a rush of drowning water, she was filled with all that her miserable singular dimensioned soul was missing.

Her jaw trickled into salt. Her tongue dissolved as she tried to speak, to tell him with all her vile, putrid being: 'Thank you'.

///

Sam awoke with a start, momentarily disoriented as he shifted in the passenger seat, his eyes wide as he stared out the windshield at the stretch of long, white highway before them. The cold took him by surprise, fully waking him up as he clutched the down sleeping bag closer around him, his breath visible on the passenger window while he leaned his forehead against it and tried to read the green and white road signs.

"We passed the border an hour ago," Dean informed him. "The town of Esther, where our pal Paul Nash lives, is still..." he checked Sam's GPS. "Not on the map. Figures. Oh well, no big deal. We'll keep driving until we find a truck stop somewhere and just ask directions."

"Dean, Alberta is three times the size of the average state. People won't 'just know' where its small towns are." The down sleeping bag was doing little to keep out the frozen tundra of an Alberta February from freezing out the interior of the Impala. "According to Map Quest, it's sixteen kilometres east of Highway 41, just keep following it north for another two hours. Whatever you do, don't blink, you'll miss the exit. Esther is a town about the size of flea."

Dean warmed himself by uttering curse words under his breath, his red hands leaving the steering wheel at intervals so he could heat them with his foul language. Sam didn't miss the angry glares Dean kept giving their back seat passenger through the rear view mirror, Castiel's inability to feel cold igniting a fiery jealousy. Sam turned, and offered Castiel a Slim Jim, which he took wordlessly, his bite taking in both plastic wrap and heavily seasoned dried meat. Sam watched as the angel tried to chew through cellophane and found it hard going. Oh well, at least it wasn't cat food.

The road was paved white with soft snow, the lack of proper tires making it difficult terrain to drive on. Still, Sam had to admit the large, softly falling flakes had a beauty to them that they had rarely had occasion to enjoy. He hadn't seen a proper snowfall since his time at Stanford, not since they'd been on the hunt and carefully avoided the more northern states in the winter months. In the past, Dean had jokingly referred to it as their 'off season'. Not that any demons had ever given them a break, if anything they seemed to step it all up around Christmas.

Castiel stared with wonder out of his passenger window, transfixed by the complexity of a snowflake's downfall from the heavens. "Manna," he whispered.

"No," Dean snapped. "Not no fucking 'manna'. It's goddamned snow. Lots and lots of goddamned snow."

"It's basically frozen water, crystallized into ice by the cold temperatures," Sam explained to Castiel. He frowned at his brother, who was being exceptionally bitter about this whole ordeal. "No two snowflakes are alike."

"Amazing, the beauty of His creation," Castiel said, his face rapt as he continued staring out the window. "The landscape here is so unique, so...pure in its construction. I don't understand why humans aren't clamouring to set up their living spaces here."

"Well, they tried, but all the virile men had their balls fall off from frostbite," Dean caustically replied.

"Balls," Castiel repeated, his brow furrowed in concentration. He closed his eyes as though making an inward conversation. "Jimmy says this is some sort of sexual reference I should be aware of."

"No, it isn't. It's an expression of my love for the arctic tundra."

"Jimmy says you are being an 'ass'. I, however, do not feel that you have any resemblance to a donkey whatsoever." Castiel leaned forward, his body infuriatingly warm despite the lack of heat that had left both Sam and Dean contemplating whether or not it would be a good idea to make a small bonfire in the glove compartment. "You don't appreciate the beauty of this landscape, a fact I find distressing. Why do you hold such animosity towards this place?"

"Because I'm fucking freezing, Cas!"

Castiel slumped back into his seat, deeply perturbed. "I don't see how that has anything to do with the visual astonishment before us. I am disappointed in the narrowness of your understanding." He took another plastinated bite of his Slim Jim, pouting over the lack of enthusiasm of his charge. Sam rolled onto his side in the passenger seat, his temple resting comfortably against the headrest. He caught a glimpse of a tiny blue and white sign, its message nearly obscured by ice and snow.

"Esther, 47km," Sam said, yawning. "I guess we'll get there sooner than I thought.

"What's a kay-em?" Dean asked.

"Kilometre," Sam informed him. "They don't use miles up here, they use the metric system. Something about it being more accurate."

Dean already bad mood was now made worse. Sam closed his eyes, not willing to be baited into this familiar conflict. "How the hell am I supposed to know how long it's going to take, then? How many kilometres to a mile?"

"About 1.2 miles," Sam said, yawning. "I'm not sure."

"If you aren't sure, how is this more accurate?"

"It's two mathematical *systems*, Dean."

"Yeah, I got that. It's just that 1.2 miles or so is hardly a definitive number. We could be off by hours for all you know."

"I'm not arguing about the metric system with you again."

"I'm not arguing."

"Do I need to remind you that this very argument is why we aren't allowed to go to Europe?" Sam sighed and turned on his side towards Dean, the speedometer bouncing haphazardly around 50 miles per hour. "You're going way too slow. The speed limit here is 100km/hr."

Dean snorted at this. "Yeah, right. I'm not falling for that one, Sammy. One hundred clicks. I might have been rebirthed on my way out of Hell, but even that wasn't yesterday. Besides, this highway is hardly in a lot of use. Can't see how anyone would care."

Sam remained silent as a massive transport truck suddenly sidled up beside them, driving on the wrong side of the two way highway as it sped past them, its deep horn resonating through the Impala enough to make it cower. "Get a move on, girlie man!" another transport truck driver hollered at Dean, the massive eighteen wheeler kicking a nasty deluge of slush against their windshield as he cut in front of them.

"These people drive like maniacs," Dean said, staring with disbelief ahead of him at the two transport trucks. They were swerving back and forth along the road, the ice nearly toppling them as they pushed their speed limit past 120.

"You're the one who said it," Sam reminded him. "Quiet stretch of highway. Good enough place as any for a trucker to catch up on some lost time. Bobby warned us it gets a bit crazy the further north you go. He stopped doing runs around here years ago." Thoughts of Bobby were a bit of a sore spot at present, since the grizzled hunter had refused to come along with them. In his words, they had enough to sort out between them without his coming along getting in the way of things. Sam was the one Paul Nash had connected with most, and there was no denying that was one hell of an Achilles heel. He told them to ring if things got too heated. In the meantime, he was heading off Florida, to take care of a maneating Mickey Mouse that was terrorizing Orlando.

Sam cell phone buzzed, and he eagerly fished it out of his pocket, believing it to be Bobby. He'd promised to check in at about this time, to give them some tips on where to stay since there wasn't much by way of motels this far north. Most of the places were bed and breakfasts, and no one travelled in the off season unless they were desperate or stupid.

It wasn't Bobby. Sam snapped the cell phone shut and tossed it onto the dashboard.

"You need to answer his calls," Dean said, eyes not leaving the road.

Sam wouldn't answer his brother, appreciating the well of rage that boiled inside of himself instead and making this his most intimate confidante. Being betrayed and lied to and nearly destroying his family was bad enough, but there was no way Sam was going to allow anyone make a fool of him again. Whatever Paul Nash thought his game was, Sam wasn't going to let him play it. He'd stick that demon pick through his heart faster than Paul could whisper "Hi there, Sam, it's Ruby."

Part of him understood that Paul wasn't anything like her, that he was far too knowledgeable and humanly curious and had little to offer by way of blatant head games. But Sam was feeling the sting of past betrayals far too deeply to concentrate on facts. He would not talk to Paul, not on a cell phone, not ever. The only answer that bastard was going to get would be the one diving silver and hot into the bursting blood sack that was his heart.

///

"Bobby says there's a motel just off the main trail leading into Esther, or at least there used to be back when he was still trucking up around here." Dean's breath was a slow steam of mist that obscured his view out the windshield. "I think we ought to hole up overnight and warm up some. I could kill for a whole pot of hot chocolate right about now."

Sam remained quiet on the issue, the gentle comforts of their world holding little by way of importance to him. The single-mindedness of his hate disturbed him on one level, while on another it also felt strangely freeing. Familiar. Ruby had opened the wound, and Paul Nash had poured salt into it. Sam ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth, tasting the bitter rust of iron.

The flickering blue and yellow lights of the motel bid them to exit off the trail and enjoy a drafty night of pseudo warmth. The Impala crawled towards it through the ice and snow, the shadow of Dean's breath obscuring a proper view. "I should have put in the frost free windows when I had the chance," Dean complained. "So, Cas, and Jimmy--Where are you guys bunking, on the floor in the goose down with the dust mites, or in the rusted out tub with the roaches? Because I gotta tell ya, from the run down look of this place, I'm betting those options are a whole lot better than the critters waiting for Sam and I inside those box springs."

The windshield became opaque with Dean's curses, and he wiped at the condensation with an impatient brush of his sleeve. The Impala slowly crept into a parking spot, its occupants staring blankly ahead.

"Holy. Shit." observed Dean.

"You got to be fucking kidding me," Sam agreed.

Castiel raised a brow, his keen senses making a quick analysis of the situation. He leaned forward to rest his chin on the corner of the driver's seat, a vague sense of disgust evident in his bearing. "This does not bode well for us," he said. "We are grossly outnumbered."

Understatement of the year, Sam thought. The neon lights of the motel's sign flashed blue and flickered sparks before finally sputtering out. The thick covering of snow prevented the scene from collapsing into total darkness, the reflected moonlight casting a spotlight on the myriad demons that crawled all over the motel. There had to be over a hundred of them, Sam quickly calculated. They were gathered in clumps in the parking lot, every room full to bursting, the very roof crawling with them, their static movements not unlike the quick scurrying of cockroaches searching out darkness. Sam held his hand over his mouth, the unbearable stench of rotting flesh and blood carried across the frozen gusts of wind that continued to hit them.

"What the hell is going on?" Sam said.

Dean put the keys to the Impala in his jacket pocket. "I guess we'd better find out."

"Dean, are you crazy? They outnumber us by like two hundred to one!"

"Your brother is correct," Castiel warned him. "It would be best if we leave."

But Dean was adamant, going so far as to leave the Impala, arctic winds tearing at his cheeks as he stood alone at the entrance to the motel. "They're not here for us," he told his companions. "If that were the case they'd have taken us out back in Vegas." Sam watched the melee before him, the disorganized chaos, the bloodied meatsuits and the freely flowing booze. Dean was right. This was some kind of weird demon party, one which they hadn't been invited to. Sam got out of the car and immediately headed for the trunk, reasoning that if they were going to be breaking up this little darkside booze-up they needed more ammo than even an angel could provide.

A cool hand lay atop of his as he placed his key in the lock. It was pale and petite, a preference that had little to do with the vile personality that infected it beneath the surface. Waves of animosity and putrid hatred coursed through that palm. Sam dared to face its owner who, despite having a different body was still easily identifiable thanks to the evil that pulsed just beneath the surface of translucent, pale skin.

"Meg," Sam said.

She linked her arm in his, pulling him forward. Dean was given an escort of his own, two of her henchmen gathered to pull him along with them. Their one weapon, Castiel, was trapped in the Impala thanks to the powerful symbols scrawled on the roof in red spray paint. You had to give Meg credit, Sam bitterly thought. She sure knew how to get a job done fast.

"Don't get your panties in a knot," she cruelly jibed. She playfully rested the crown of her head on Sam's shoulder, a mockery of romantic sweetness. "Much as I would love to rip your head off of your shoulders and eat your brains while your brother watched--Oh, Sammy baby, how's *that* for foreplay?--We all need you both alive."

They were shoved into the bar attached to the end of the motel, the demons parting as they walked in. Sam wisely kept his eye contact at a minimum, but Dean was eager to confront anyone who dared to sneer at him.

"Dean," Sam said, his voice tempered with fear. "What the hell are we going to do?"

"I'm doing what I do whenever I end up in a dive of a bar infested with demons," Dean replied. He nodded at the large, dirty, sour smelling bartender, a whistle garnering the straggly haired monolith's full attention. "Yo. Compadre. Couple of brewskies. Make 'em cold ones. It's hotter than hell in her


	10. Chapter 10

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: ten

Rating: R (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam/omc that looks like Hugh Dillon (w00t!), genderswap, Trickster, Alberta, Meg, angel molestation, TMI embittered health care professionals, etc.

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke. Not even if he had a sex change), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.

Summary: The boys who were boys are girls who can still be boys. You can't deny an advantage when you see one. Just ask Jimmy's opinion on the matter. What happened in Vegas wants to hunt you down and kill you. Too bad you gave that freaky chick Sam Winchester your cell number.

Note: Feedback is love! Even if you're telling me you hate it!

a lingering fringe--chapter ten

The two beers were poured into filthy glasses, each earning a good amount of spit which a half dozen demons contributed to before the drinks were finally handed to Sam and Dean. To Sam's horror, Dean actually considered taking a sip anyway, but seeing as how corpse hork kind of took the thrill off the alcohol, he set the drink down on a nearby table instead.

"So, what's with the party?" Dean said, hands in the pockets of his jeans, a smug smile on his face. "I'm guessing it's on account of one of two things. They've brought back Tab soda, or hell truly has frozen over. 'Course, just one of those things could mean the existence of the other. Kind of goes hand in hand."

The blackly clad demons murmured over the slippery appearance of Meg as she crept closer to Sam and Dean, her black eyes unmoving as she kept them in her predator sight. She licked the top row of her teeth as she stood close to Sam, who flinched at her invasive proximity. "I almost didn't recognize you," she said to him, her head cocked to one side in mock sweetness. She twined her thin fingers suggestively into the buttons of his shirt. "I heard you had a little incident down in Vegas and got your freak on. Good for you, Sammy baby. It's about time you got in touch with your feminine side." She cast a wicked glance at Dean. "You too, buttercup. Don't forget, Sammy already got a taste of the wild side, thanks to me. It's about time you caught up."

Sam pushed her roughly off and she staggered back, a hand held up to keep the retaliation of her henchmen at bay. "It's all right, boys," she said. "Sammy *likes* it rough."

Dean was getting more than a little fed up with the tense standoff. The bar was cold, the tips of his fingers were turning blue and if they didn't get some answers and get moving there was a damn good chance they'd die of hypothermia before the night was finished. "You got some nerve, waltzing in here," the big, dirty bartender snorted at him. "There's a lot of us here who haven't forgotten you. Forty years is a long time in hell."

"What can I say?" Dean said. "I figured I'd play catch up. See how the old gang was doing, but I guess it's all same old, same old. I see you're still hovering where you don't belong, causing torment and strife wherever you go. Even now, you're stuck in a dingy bar, in a minus 3 on the border of some nothing at all town in the middle of less than nothing." With a quick movement, Dean reached behind the bar and snatched up a couple of fresh bottles of beer. He tossed one to Sam, who caught it with one hand. There was a mutual twist and sigh of released carbonated courage. Dean took a long swig and gratefully swallowed. "For a bunch of assholes hell bent on destroying the Earth, you bastards have a real hankering for living in a rut."

"Once you get used to hellfire, the cold is a nice change," Meg replied, her expression churlish as she circled them. Dean didn't give her the satisfaction of his anger, and instead continued to coolly drink his beer, despite the fact it was only adding to his already chilled to the bone discomfort. Considering that every movement he made caused the demons surrounding him to hiss and gnash their teeth, parting like a zombie Dead Sea as he walked past them, Dean figured bravado in a bottle came at a cheap enough price.

Meg hooked her thumbs into the loops of her tight fitting, highway dusted jeans. "So tell me, what's so important up here that you had to crash our little party? Oh wait, let me guess." She pressed against Sam and stood on tiptoe, to whisper and bite at his ear. "You got a friend here. A real special one."

Dean didn't miss the flickering hate that passed over Sam's features. Sam took a swig from his own bottle of beer, his attention riveted to some point far beyond the crooked, neon Budweiser sign over the bar. "That depends on just how 'special' he is," Sam said.

"No, Sammy baby. You need to tell *me*." She pulled a small cell phone out of her jeans jacket pocket and waved it with teasing purpose in front of Sam's face. She pressed a button on the side, releasing the sounds of what was some serious passion digitally captured in mp3. She upped the volume, and Dean could hear a familiar voice shouting, becoming higher and higher pitched while a deeper toned voice offered his swearing encouragement.

"What's your name, baby? Come on, tell me your name..."

The answer was moaning and whimpering, which only increased the more the question was asked, until it culminated into something aurally pornographic. Sam grabbed the cell phone out of Meg's hand and smashed it on the bar counter. The cell phone shouted "Harder!"

Sam slammed the phone again. It broke in half. "Oh fuck, harder!"

This time he dropped it to the floor and stomped on it like it was a cinder ready to ignite his matchstick mansion. No call was ever going to go out on that sucker again.

Dean crossed his arms over his chest, the neck of his bottle of beer dangling between his fingertips.

"You had sex with Paul?"

"It wasn't exactly planned," Sam sheepishly admitted.

A clearer picture of what was going on suddenly crystallized into Dean's understanding. He downed his beer in three steady gulps and tossed the empty bottle to the floor, where it shattered. The demons in the bar gazed expectantly at the Winchester brothers, revelling in the ire that had suddenly erupted between them. "When, exactly, where you planning on telling me about this?"

"Um, never," Sam said, defensive. "It was none of your business, and frankly, it isn't relevant to why we're here."

"Like hell it isn't," Dean shot back. He pointed an accusing finger in Sam's face. "I didn't drag us out into the middle of nowhere just for some otherworld booty call!"

"You got no right to be judging me, Dean! Come on, how many times have you slunk back to the motel room with a piece, huh? So I got a little carried away, so what?"

"So what? Dammit, Sam, this is different! You were a *chick*! I'm the first to jump on the man-whore wagon, but for fuck's sake, *I'm* not the one spreading my knees for whatever passing demon happens to buy me a coffee!"

"You can cut the judgement day shit, Dean. You're the one who let an angel of the Lord cop a feel!"

"That is so not the same thing!" Dean shouted. "Nothing happened, not like you and your journey to uncover the myth of the multiple female orgasm!"

Sam's eyes narrowed. "Oh, it's no myth," he said.

Dean's fury faltered. He shrugged inward as he noted that the demons in the bar had gathered around himself and his brother, fixing them into a circular ring, like they were the headlining entertainment. "Seriously?" Dean asked.

"Three times," Sam said, holding up three fingers as if Dean couldn't count. Then, almost wistful. "It finished off into the home run."

Dean thought about this for a long moment. He wanted to be angry. Real angry. But Sam had hit a sore spot in his porn addled id, and it was smarting like a bitch with a too-tight strap-on. "Damn," he said, acknowledging his jealousy.

"I didn't know about him when that happened," Sam said, embarrassment and sadness competing in his apology. "You and Cas both proved he was just human, so how was I supposed to know any different?"

Meg entered their dysfunctional ring, a coy tilt to her chin invading the sudden truce that had sprouted between Sam and Dean. "I don't know how you two got this far," she said, her black eyes steeped deep with contempt. "It doesn't matter how hard he stuck it to you. You all would have ended up here, you wouldn't have been able to resist." She stood nose to nose with Dean, a stand-off she wasn't about to back down from. "You're attracted to this place, just like the rest of us. You got more hell in you than you realize."

"If you mean by 'this place' the town of Esther, then why aren't you all just walking in and doing your usual apocalypse now routine?" Dean pushed Meg back into the crowd that surrounded them. "You got a whole army here, after all. What's the hold up?"

It was Sam who understood it best. "They can't go in because they're afraid," he said. His jaw worked over this puzzle. "Paul Nash is as much a mystery to them as he is to us. They aren't killing us because they know where we're going. They think they'll get answers if we go in."

The bartender spat on the counter. "You shut your mouth! You don't say that meatsuit's name in these parts!"

Silently, Dean and Sam made their way out of the bar, the demons parting with slow, deliberate movements, giving the brothers a wide berth as they passed through. Hundreds of black eyes watched them wordlessly as they slid into the seats of Impala, Castiel expectant and worried in the back. "You were able to leave without injury," he observed. "Perhaps they intend to follow us into the town of Esther."

Meg stood at the entrance of the bar, her jaw jutted forward in defiance as she glared at them. Dean turned on the ignition, flashing his high beams on her, purifying her into brilliant yellow light until only the dark matter of her eyes remained.

"Getting in won't be the problem," Dean observed. "It's leaving that'll be a pain the ass."

///

According to Sam's calculations, Esther was only a twenty minute drive from the demon infested motel. Dean kept his attention riveted to the abandoned, icy highway ahead, its isolation broken by the occasional road sign proclaiming the insane speed limit of 100km/hr. The silence within the Impala was as muffling as the snowstorm that threatened to overtake them, the thick flakes increasing in density the closer they crawled to their destination. Dean's thumb teased the play button on the car's tape deck, only to rethink the action, his hand curling into a cold fist. AC/DC's 'Sink The Pink' suddenly had a whole slew of uncomfortable imagery attached.

Sam cleared his throat, his fist lightly tapped against his lips. "Out with it, Dean," he said.

"What?" Dean said, feigning innocence.

"Just spit it out. I know you're dying to ask."

Dean allowed exactly two heartbeats to pump before talking. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

"Is the sex better as a guy or a girl?"

Castiel groaned in the back seat, the heel of his palm against his forehead as he rubbed Jimmy's continued grudge away. "I don't understand why humans are so obsessed with procreation," he said. "If I'm not being assailed by your thoughts, Dean, it's Jimmy's imagined needs which I can't properly interpret other than to know they give him both exceptional guilt and pleasure, neither of which I can fully appreciate."

"It depends on the circumstances," Sam said, ignoring Castiel remarks and answering Dean's question.

"I can't see the point in carnal lust," Castiel continued. "In heaven, every action has a specific, ordained purpose. There is no room for this strange, emotional see-sawing that confuses physical necessity and companionship." He winced, the heel of his hand pressed tighter against the side of his skull. "This ache is unbearable."

"Come on, Jimmy, lay off him," Dean said. He turned to his brother. "So it was, you know...Good?"

"What was?"

"The sex, dude! The *sex*!"

"I don't really want to talk about this with you, Dean. It's kind of, well, private."

"Oh grow up, Sam," Dean replied, annoyed. "If there's one thing a decade or two of watching porno has taught me, it's that sex is never private!"

"Sorry. I never did get a chance to enrol in the Dean Winchester School Of Skank."

"There's nothing skanky about having a conversation about sex."

"There is when you're asking your brother how many times she got off with her boyfriend when she was your sister."

"Chuck is going to have a field day with this one. I get a headache just thinking about how he's going to get his rocks off next."

"Why is Chuck even in this conversation?"

"Because he's a pervert, Sam. An unwashed, malnourished peeping tom who should be minding his own damned business. I really hope he writes this down. In red ink, for emphasis."

"My head hurts," Castiel complained.

"Whine, whine, whine, that's all I ever hear," Dean bitched. They passed the homemade sign proclaiming 'Welcome to Esther, population 2,023. Put Some Roots In Our Fertile Soil'. Clearly, with a population that low there was little else to do other than be 'fertile' during the long winter months. He was about to make a crack about how they harvested babies in the spring, only to be stopped short by Sam's sudden panic.

"Castiel?" Dean's view was obscured by Sam's sudden twisting at an awkward angle in his seat to get a better look at their passenger. "Oh my God. Dean, pull over, something's wrong!"

Dean pulled over to the side of the road, leaving the engine running as he came to a full stop. He leapt out of the driver's seat, gale force winds tearing at him the second he left the car. He pulled open the passenger door with effort, his fists grabbing tight onto the lapels of Castiel's beige trenchcoat. The angel's eyes had rolled back, the usual strong white light that was his essence shorting out like a damaged incandescent bulb. Tiny, white lightning flashes shimmered across the bridge of his nose, his body shaking in violent convulsions. The interior of the Impala was filled with the scent of a spent electrical current. The remnants of ozone.

"He's having a seizure," Sam said. "Has he ever done this before?"

"Never," Dean said, shaking his head. Cold winds bit at him, invading the interior with a violence that suggested it had something against them. He bid Sam to take his place, his brother quickly obliging as he crawled over the gear shift and into the back seat. "We need to get to a hospital, pronto."

"They won't know what to do," Sam said, but Dean wasn't listening. He was going on instinct, and what it told him was that Cas was in a human body and it was acting humanly sick. Angels, demons or plain old Bob, people went to hospitals when they were sick. Heck of a no-brainer.

Dean peeled down the highway, the wheels skidding at intervals on the ice. The back end of the Impala fishtailed, but he damn well didn't care. He had no trouble getting the car up to one hundred clicks. Hell, he was ready to push her to 140 if that's what it took.

"Dean?"

"Cas? What's going on?"

"Not Cas...It's Jimmy." He grimaced as his body tensed, his eyes lolling, out of focus. "Something's wrong. With Cas. I think. I think..."

"Relax, pal," Dean said, forcing his voice to stay calm, cool, in control. Even though he felt like his heart was about to leap out of his mouth and start beating the crap out of the rest of him. "We're taking you to a hospital."

"What's wrong with Cas?" Sam asked, his palm firm on Jimmy's forehead, holding him in place in case he started flailing again.

Jimmy's mouth was dry. A tiny stream of blood seeped from his nose, to drip against his grimacing mouth, staining his teeth red. "I think he's dying."

///

"I'm not the usual ER doctor," the clean cut, grinning Doctor Nigel Nash proudly proclaimed, his cheerful manner irritating Dean no end. "You see, every February, the essential staff gets their holiday and this year they all opted to go to the Dominican together because the head nurse, Shirley Parker, she's getting married to the hospital pathologist, Doctor Ralph Noyse. She's keeping her name, so she'll be known around here as Nurse Shirley Noyse-Parker. I advised her against it, but hey, some people have no common sense." His big blue eyes stared dreamily into space. "Ah, the Dominican. Lovely this time of year. I would have gone, too, but you see I got the short straw and got stuck doing the emergency duty for the week, even though we haven't seen an emergency in February at Sacred Heart General for the past, oh, hundred or so years. So it didn't really matter that my specialty doesn't cover emergency room issues, but hey, a hundred or so years is a lot of precedent to go by and February in Esther is a real bitch. So, I gave the Noyse-Parkers my blessing, fool that I am, and here we now are--breaking what was, in my view, one heck of a great dry run." He smiled blankly over the medical chart the harried nurse had handed him. "Seizure. Sudden, profuse bleeding from the nose. Difficulty breathing. Erratic heart-rate. Extremely low blood pressure, as in corpse low blood pressure. 23/47. Nurse Algernon, please get me another stethoscope, that can't be right." He sighed as he went over the fictional history Sam and Dean had given him for his patient. "Even my son got to go to Las Vegas," Dr. Nigel Nash complained. "I'm the only one stuck in this shit-hole." He slapped the clipboard shut and hung it at its slot beside the bed. "Your friend is stabilized now, but since we don't know how or why this happened, we'll have to keep him here under observation for a couple of days. He's lucky he's got such a nice room. It used to be the chapel until we converted it for the extra bed space."

"Nigel Nash," Dean said, mulling over the harried doctor's age and physical attributes. He couldn't see a hint of their prey in him, but he simply had to ask. "Any relation to Paul Nash?"

"My son," Dr. Nash replied, proudly. "He's the town Sheriff. Just him and Deputy Greg Crowfoot and that's all the legal leeway we need around here." He glanced at the admittance sheet, frowning over the name at the top. "Says here your sickly little buddy was brought in by a Sam Winchester." Dean felt his heart sink at this, and he gave his brother a subtle but hard kick on the ankle. Using his real name...What the hell was he thinking?

"You must be her brothers!" Dr. Nigel Nash proclaimed, grinning from ear to ear. He patted them both on the shoulders with a cheery familiarity that was irksome. "Well, well, isn't this nice, you folks coming up all this way and here my boy Paul was all heartsore for nothing." He gave them both a sickeningly goofy, Fred Rogers styled grin. "Just wait 'till I tell him. He'll run through the snow barefoot, the stupid jackass."

Sam was clearly more confused than flattered. "I'm sure that's not necessary."

"Oh, but it *is*!" Dr. Nash's overblown, false enthusiasm belied a hidden family drama, one that had made Sam's feminine side the central theme. "For the past two weeks, all I ever heard was 'Why won't Sam call'." He wrung his hands in mock woeful frustration. "'I hope her brother didn't get to her. Her family is nuts'. 'I didn't meet Sam outside a meth clinic, I swear.' 'No, Dad, Sam has never been to jail. Yes, I checked Interpol.' 'No Mom, I swear, Sam is not the usual, track mark armed skank I tend to bring home'. 'Tell my sisters to mind their goddamned business, I'm not sending them Sam's blood sample.' 'Sam is so pretty.' 'Sam is so beautiful.' 'Sam is my intellectual light.' 'Sam is my equal'. 'Fuck me, Sam is so smart and beautiful and I can't live without Sam.' 'I'm gonna slit my fucking wrists like some big, bald emo baby because life is a big pile of steaming hot dogshit without Sam'. Of course, that meant I had slip him lorazipan in his coffee, and when that didn't work I coupled it with 80 milligrams of Zoloft, and then he starts bitching about how I should buy the Folgers and not the Maxwell House, because the Maxwell House suddenly tastes like sweaty monkey feet, and why the *hell* is he so tired all the time. Oh yes, and would I *please* tell his sisters Monica and Mona to stop calling him at three am to bitch him out about ruining his life with needy relationships. On and on and on, Jesus." He glanced nervously over his shoulder, as though sure said object of Paul Nash's obsession was about to come into view. "I hope she's not here to dump him. That's happened a couple of times before. One was a drugged up whore, wiped out his bank account, stole his furniture. His mother and I had to foot the mortgage on his house for two months. Our trip to Jamaica to celebrate our forty-second anniversary, gone in a quick fix of methamphetamines for some slut he met in Maine whose last name he couldn't even remember." Dr. Nigel Nash sighed, and scratched at his temple with the blue pen he held in his hand, leaving blue lines just above his ear. "He's such a smart boy in so many other ways. With women, he's always on some stupid rescue mission. I better call Frank, our bank manager. See if I can lock his account for a few days." He grabbed Dean's limp hand and shook it firmly. "Nice meeting you fellas. No offence, I hope. You just can't be too careful."

Distracted by pressing family financial and emotional problems, Dr. Nash left them alone in the room with Castiel, Dean's fury at Sam instantly unleashed. "You gave them your real name, you idiot!"

"It was a high pressure situation, and the nurse wouldn't accept any of our usual ID. They're real sticklers up here. She'd only take my birth certificate, and she said it had to be government issue." Sam placed his nervous hands on his hips. "She studied the date of birth like she was head of birth certificate forensics or something. I had to give her the real one, she would have found me out otherwise." Dr. Nash walked past the room's window, and Sam closed the blinds, giving them some proper privacy. His emotions were deeply guarded, but his surface uneasiness was evident. "I never would have thought Paul had any hang-ups. He didn't give any hints he had enabling issues."

"Dammit," Dean said, his hand massaging an unhappy kink out of his neck. He flexed a highly unfamiliar muscle, feeling the smoother bone structure slowly ebb into shape, like a close fitting coat. Her centre of gravity was instantly off, and she had to stretch her arms long above her head to right her spine's alignment. She could feel her shoulder sockets click into their new place. Like some damned intersex Transformer. No matter how easy the process was, it didn't mean Dean had to like it. "Paul Nash knows us as women, Sam," Dean explained. "You heard his dad, he's got a soft spot for girls in trouble. I'd say being stuck in a two cop town with a sick angel and a few hundred demons ready to rip us limb from limb when we leave is the definition of troubled souls." She shrugged off her jacket and draped it at the foot of the bed, warming Castiel's feet. "Besides, if he checked Interpol it would list us as two Winchester *males*, so being chicks gets us off the hook."

Sam's doubt at this was tempered by concern. He nodded at the prone form of Castiel, pale and uncommunicative on the bed between them. "Do you think he's going to be okay?" Sam asked.

Dean pulled a chair up alongside the bed and sank into it, her hand reaching out and adjusting the oxygen tubes affixed to his nose, ensuring the long lines weren't pinching Cas's ear. Castiel stirred at the touch, and Dean's hand rested on the pillow, beside his cheek. "I don't know," Dean said, worried. "He really scared me back there. Jimmy said Cas was dying, and he wasn't doing too bad of that job himself." Dean pressed her palm deep against Castiel's pillow, the weight of her concern a physical expression. Castiel was pale and near lifeless on the bed, his skin cold to the touch. She tried to warm his hand by clasping it in her own, the angel returning the gesture with a shockingly weak grip.

"Dean?" Castiel's voice was weak, his eyes forced open into thin slits that were clearly having trouble focusing. They were bloodshot, his pupils dilated as he gave Dean's current appearance a wavering once over. "Am I in heaven?" he asked.

"No, Jimmy," Dean said, her face hovering close to his, a vain effort to keep his mind cleared. "I need to speak to Cas. You need to push him to the surface."

"I can't," Jimmy replied, his eyes closing in exhausted effort. "He's so sick. Like his power got sucked out of him." Jimmy grimaced, his hand tightening around Dean's. "My back hurts."

He tried to roll onto his side on his own, but he was too weak for even this and Dean obliged by giving Jimmy a gentle nudge on his shoulder and hip, his blue hospital gown gaping open at the back. She paused, her hand still on Jimmy's hip, her eyes clearly playing tricks on her. Because, dammit, there was no way she was seeing this, not when there'd been anything other than just a *hint* of it before. Like the rush of kissed air. Like a fighting sparrow's flight.

Castiel had fucking wings. Large, clearly visible, grey tinted, man-sized, goddamned wings. Dean cursed under her breath, some insane part of her understanding trying to figure out if these appendages had always been there, or if they were something new. Reason dictated the former, especially since the shadow of them had been visible enough, but not this solid, corporeal, feathery weirdness that she could plainly see and, if she wanted to, touch. "Sam, what the hell is this? Am I really seeing this?"

But Sam was no longer in the room, a further point of worry for Dean considering her brother was capable of heading for Paul Nash's home and performing an impromptu enabler exorcism/intervention, a rash decision that could land them both in jail for murder and Castiel dead. Dean snatched her cell phone out of her jeans and tried to dial out. The white noise of blinking arial font text on a dark blue background was the only response. No Signal Available.

She swore and clapped the cell phone shut with her palm. She couldn't leave Castiel here like this, not without knowing for sure if this was a private viewing or a public one. She moved her shaking hand off of Castiel's hip, fingertips teasing the tips of the feathers that tapered nearby. They were black on the edges, curled into ragged strips. Dean dared to rub a tiny portion of the feather between her forefinger and thumb, a smeared line of grey staining her touch. Soot. He'd been singed when he flew into hell to rescue me, Dean realized. His wings still held the damage of that ill-conceived act.

Poor stupid angel, Dean thought, a pang of sympathy overwhelming her. She caressed the folded softness of his wings, their silky texture a strange mixture of angora down and crow toughness. An equally odd, but not unpleasant, scent emitted from them with the soft caress of her fingers, and she pressed her face against the outside of his wing, breathing in what was, to her reference, a scent not unlike freshly cut pine.

Castiel rolled onto his back, his wings tucked tightly beneath him. Weird, Dean thought. He doesn't look very happy.

A point well taken thanks to the sudden, resounding slap Castiel's open palm whipped across Dean's face.

"You disgusting pervert!" the furious angel shouted at her.


	11. Chapter 11

Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels (website: http://pink_.com)

Chapter: eleven

Rating: R (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam/omc that looks like Hugh Dillon (w00t!), genderswap, Trickster, Alberta, Meg, angel molestation, TMI embittered health care professionals, etc.

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke. Not even if he had a sex change), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.

Summary: The boys who were boys are girls who can still be boys. You can't deny an advantage when you see one. Just ask Jimmy's opinion on the matter. What happened in Vegas wants to hunt you down and kill you. Too bad you gave that freaky chick Sam Winchester your cell number.

Note: Feedback is love! Even if you're telling me you hate it!

a lingering fringe--chapter eleven

"You hit a girl!"

Dean Winchester has seen a lot of things in both his and her life, many of which could be explained away with a couple of sentences and a grunting nod. This current experience, however, was definitely not something she could just tuck away inside that little mental drawer that said 'Don't Look' in her consciousness, the one that had a few decades or so of hell sitting in it, along with an old copy of a Marie Osmond LP and a stub of black eyeliner. Castiel and Jimmy were both dangerously close to finding their way into that drawer, though Dean figured the housing between the two was too crowded as it was.

Watching a singular person with two distinctive, strong personalities having a heated discussion amongst themselves was not an easy process for the average human mind to sensibly render. In Dean's case, her mental imagery had somehow shifted the two people living within the vessel into mirror images that moved and spoke independent of each other. Jimmy slouched at the foot of the bed, his leg dangling over the edge, his bare toes poking at the cold floor. Castiel, at the head of the bed, with all blankets tucked tight around him lest Dean's curious hands got the best of her again, reluctantly acknowledged his counterpart's outburst.

"I did not hit a girl. I hit Dean Winchester," Castiel clarified. "I assure you, Jimmy, I was wholly justified."

Jimmy's fury was evident, his lip curled in disgust as he glared at Castiel's blank confession. He crawled closer to Castiel, until his nose was nearly touching the angel's, his posture so staunchly threatening Dean was sure Jimmy was going to try to get in a good smackdown of his own. Which wasn't really a good idea since he'd be beating the crap out of himself and angels had a heck of a right hook. Good thing they were already in a hospital, Jimmy was aiming to have him and Castiel spend a month together in traction. "I have never hit a woman in my entire life, and there is no way I'm going to let some angel who thinks he's 'justified' use *my* body to do it. Apologize to Dean!"

Castiel was scandalized. "I will not! I cannot possibly offer forgiveness for that unwelcome assault!"

"Give me a break, all I did was touch your wings." Dean forced her hand beneath Castiel's back and pulled out the resisting, feathered limb in question. The stroke of her palm as she straightened it had an unexpected effect on Jimmy, who sighed and closed his eyes, enjoying Dean's hands on that wing in a way that was outright indecent. "Oh, baby, that is different. But real nice. Really nice."

There was a choked whimper out of Castiel, who was obviously having a very difficult time figuring out if he wanted to continue this highly erotic trip across the universe courtesy of Magic Fingers Dean or snap said Dean's neck like a twig. Dean let the feather drop, so to speak, the wing quickly tucked back underneath Castiel with a guilty furtiveness that spoke of adolescent sneak peeks at his Dad's girlie mags. Which, considering how embarrassed and protective Cas was of his wings suggested that they had a lot more significance than looking cool on cathedral ceilings and aiding in quick escapes when the going got emotionally uncomfortable.

"Are you telling me you can actually *see* them?" Castiel asked Dean. A thin sheen of sweat covered the angel's brow. He wasn't just pissed. He was mortified.

Dean wasn't sure exactly how to proceed but figured, wrongly or rightly, honesty couldn't hurt. "They're a grayish-blue, with singed tips," she said. She searched her mind for an appropriate bird to compare them to. "Kind of like a pigeon's."

The room was thick with Castiel's uncomfortable silence. A brewing storm of embarrassed shame crept into every shadow of the room, where it crawled into a tiny ball and began to weep. Castiel remained stone in the face of this revealing, but Jimmy, with his long held delusions of what saints and devils and angels were supposed to be, was crushed to his core, his hand clawing at his heart as if it would be better to just give it up and stop beating.

"A *pigeon*? Are you kidding me?" He shook his head. He couldn't believe it. These kinds of cruel facts couldn't possibly be true. His tortured soul begged for Castiel to refute it, but being an angel, Castiel was unable to lie, even if in moments such as this he desperately wanted to. "The armies of Heaven fly into the storm of Damnation like those fat, winged rats?" Jimmy's disillusionment sank deep, his shoulders slumped as he pondered all the information he'd compiled over his lifetime concerning angels. "I could understand a sparrow wing, there's plenty of Biblical reference to them. Or even a crow, I mean, they are very intelligent, crafty birds, they're way up there on the avian food chain. Cool black crow wings, kicking demon butt, I can easily see that." Jimmy let out a defeated sigh. "But, come on, a fucking *pigeon*?"

"Why are you looking at me like it's my fault?" Dean asked Jimmy. She gestured to the evidence. "Are you telling me you can't see them?"

"No, I can't," Jimmy said, the admission surprising him. He was coolly assessing of Castiel's keen embarrassment, a mental cataloguing working between them with wordless ease. It was like Jimmy was going through some very uncomfortable top secret files if Castiel's thin lipped panic meant anything. "Oh, I get it," Jimmy said, cheerfully informed. "This is all about sex." He shook a mischievous finger at Castiel, who remained immobile stone in the face of Jimmy's good natured teasing. "Dirty, nasty, horny angel sex." He turned to Dean. "Their wings are like erogenous zones, so of course you can't normally see them, except for their shadows. It's a modesty thing."

Dean mulled this over, a certain known point of history between herself and Castiel wedging itself into a very uncomfortable spot. From the way Castiel refused to look at her, he damn well knew it. "So, if seeing an angel's wings means they're outright naked and ready to get the groove on, why is it we humans have so many paintings of angels al flagrante with the feathers?"

Castiel's stone facade was ruffled. His hand nervously adjusted the oxygen tubes at his nose, and then tightened the sheet around him as though fearful Dean was going to wrench it off and have another go at his oh-so-soft scapulars. "It's an adjustment for us when we visit this realm. There are, at times...Complications. I admit, it was extremely embarrassing to see how St. John Of Antioch's depiction of us became as popular in Western culture as it did. That revelation was quite by accident, an unfortunate encounter involving Uriel and a woman of nobility who resided with Emperor Theodosius I."

"Which begs for the explanation of why that little room your former boss Zach held me prisoner in was a wall to wall baroque winged angel orgy." Dean rested her chin on Castiel's shoulder, his personal space seriously compromised now by two people demanding immediate answers. "Not one inch of that room didn't have some form of museum piece angel porn. What gives?"

"You said it yourself," Castiel replied, surprised at Dean's ignorance. "In creating a comfortable spot in heaven for you, I simply took those things which you enjoy most. Which happens to be hamburgers and pornography." Castiel frowned. "I admit, I had to do a bit of creative interpretation for the latter."

"You were looking real careful at some of those works of art," Dean remembered. "Jacob Wresting With The Angel in particular."

"I have grown to appreciate the aesthetics of the genre," Castiel haughtily replied.

His admission did not go unpunished. Jimmy's mouth opened wide in understanding horror. Nearly toppling Dean out of her chair, he pushed her aside as he grabbed Castiel, and thus himself, by the throat. "Appreciating the aesthetics. That's what I said to my dad! That's how I justified taking my mom's Vogue magazines!"

"Your thoughts and actions have always been transparent," Castiel coolly replied.

"You filthy liar, you didn't choose me because I was 'a worthy man', you chose me because I used the same masturbation material!"

"I have never lied. You know as well as I that I am unable to."

"You said you chose me because I was 'special'!"

"There were seven pages detailing humans in varying degrees of undress sporting angel wings. You had a great deal of procreational interest in this, as I recall. I felt this meant we had an understanding."

Castiel tried to wrench Jimmy's hands off his throat, Dean doing her best to help him, ready to break his fingers if she had to. "Stop fighting!"

"It was just a release of pent up sexual frustration! It's biology, not belief!"

"I felt there was a kinship."

"Kinship, my ass! I gave up my family, my kid, my *life*, all because of a few dirty fantasies over a Guess Jeans ad? Oh my God, you make me sick!"

One of Castiel's hands broke free. "You are to respect me, Jimmy," he warned. "I do not appreciate your judgemental tone. I need not remind you I am a warrior angel of the Lord."

"No you're not, you're a fucking pigeon shitting all over my goddamned porch!"

Castiel held out two index fingers on his freed right hand. "I will not warn you again!"

"For God's sake, put that down!" Dean leapt onto the bed, straddling Castiel as she held down his wrists, imprisoning him against the hard mattress. "You're going to smite yourself, you idiot!"

The fact that he struggled at all spoke volumes to Dean of how physically weak Castiel still was. A tiny white spark shot across the angel's left eye, a hint of the mysterious latent sickness lurking within. The threat of another seizure worried Dean, especially considering how close both Cas and Jimmy had come to dying back in the Impala. She kept her hands tight on his wrists, her knees digging hard enough into his hips to make her thigh muscles ache. "You need to shut the hell up, get your emotionless planet Vulcan voodoo back on and ease up on the adrenaline. Because if you don't, I'm going to knee your balls so hard you're going to pass out or wish you were dead. Either one works for me."

Castiel's laboured breathing echoed in the near empty room, a bead of sweat sliding off his brow, to tickle the circumference of his ear as it continued its salty journey down the length of his throat. "Good God, you are one sexy bitch," Jimmy gasped.

Dean relaxed her grip on his wrists and crawled off of him, but not before pressing her knee painfully into his groin for good measure. "I guess you're feeling fine. I can't say the same for your tenant. Where's Cas gone?"

Jimmy pointed at the back of his head. "Hiding in a dusty corner, sulking." He turned his head and loosened the tight blankets Castiel had so stubbornly mummified himself in. "Can you still see them?" he asked.

A hint of blue-grey feathers peeked out from behind Jimmy's waist. "No," Dean lied. Sure, her cheek still smarted from where Cas had slapped her, but then she had performed an act on him which, in his mind, was the equivalent of angel-rape.

A flicker of understanding briefly passed over Jimmy's features. A quick 'thank-you' from a very embarrassed celestial being before he ran back to that dark, unhappy corner in Jimmy's head.

Dean sank into the plastic chair next to the bed, her hands clasped on the cold, steel bedrails. "You shouldn't be angry with him," Dean said. Jimmy bristled at her words. "He didn't have a choice, not the way you think. If it wasn't you, it would have been some other sucker. He had his orders, and not performing them wasn't an option. He didn't even have the *concept* of what an option is until he made you his vessel. All he knew is that you'd either say yes or no, without any real understanding of what it was he was asking of you, or why. In his mind, you were never going to say no. It was all a predestined game plan, with no variable." She adjusted the corner of his pillow, bringing it into better alignment underneath Jimmy's neck. Her knuckles brushed against his throat, his skin feverish to the touch. "He's just as much a victim of this as you are, so stop being pissed at him, okay?"

Jimmy closed his eyes, exhaustion from his internal fight having done a number on his system. "I lost my family," he said, his voice weak, a near whisper in the empty, chilled room.

Shadows from snowfall filtered in from the window against the far wall, large flecks descending in grey hues within the bright square of light reflected on the floor. The snow was burying the Earth, Dean thought. It was smothering all the hurt inflicted on it, hiding it and preserving it beneath a thick layer of permafrost.

"So did I," Dean reminded him.

Jimmy's body stirred, a warm palm placed on Dean's chilled knuckles, her hands still clutching the steel bedrails. The gentle pressure made her stomach tense, the sweetness of the gesture playing havoc with her emotions. Hormones, she thought, trying to dismiss it. Man. Those lies just kept on coming.

"I'm sorry I hit you," Castiel said.

"It's nothing," Dean replied.

Castiel raised his hand, his fingers tracing the red marks he'd inflicted on her cheek, a healing warmth erasing the injury. The tenderness of this was unexpected, the message remaining in Castiel's warm palm on her throat, his thumb brushing the line of her jaw with longing memory. By turning his back on blind obedience, Castiel had lost his family as well. Dean leaned into the seemingly innocent caress, burying her face in the pine scented sweat of Castiel's hand, her lips softly nipping the thick pad of his thumb. Hurt and arousal had so often been intertwined in the past. The sinking lust dipping low within her belly was a familiar ache. Her hands tightened on the bed rails, her mouth sighing open as she allowed Castiel's thumb admittance against her tongue, the taste of his flesh salty-sweet.

The door slammed open. "Well, hello there, patient!" Dr. Nigel Nash exclaimed, turning on the overhead light and bathing them in its blinding glow, sterilizing all acts of passion. "Great news--You're not dead! Don't know how or why, shucks darn, but this seems to be the case. Oh, hey, were you two little lovebirds planning on having intercourse before I walked in, because if you were I'll just tell my son he can go on his crazy testosterone fuelled witch-hunt against Sam Winchester's brother after you're done. How long do you think you'll be, twenty, thirty minutes? You do realize the average sexual encounter only lasts for ten, with maximum enjoyment capped at fifteen minutes. Of course, if you consider foreplay as actual sexual contact, you can have your boogie night last through the following morning and possibly until early afternoon, depending on whether or not your manly man is willing to the do the breakfast dishes or that load of laundry that's been sitting in the corner for the past week because the chicks dig that, they really do. Ask any of them, they will say there is a direct correlation between orgasms and a man willing to wash his own underwear." He gave them both a dazzling, goofy smile. "You must be this Deanna my son Paul keeps talking about, in between his infamous 'Where is my beloved Sam, oh woe upon my misguided dick' monologues. It's very nice to meet the young woman who is the reason my son had to get a tetanus shot the minute he got into town. Not to mention the test for necrotizing fasciitis, which I suspected at first because of the large, black, pus-filled cavity that spanned out from the original injury, but thankfully Paul still has his leg, his broken heart, and his goddamn bank account that right now he has no access to, hallelujah." He cheerfully tapped his freshly sharpened pencil on the steel bedrail, a perfect tone in 'C' resonating through the now cramped room. "Just as an FYI, lead can kill people. Especially lead stabbed in the thigh due to some unknown Vegas girlfriend's slutty sister having a psychotic episode. I'm sorry, did I say 'slutty'? I meant to say WHORE."

Dr. Nash's vicious diatribe was cut short by the sudden appearance of his son in the doorway. Paul Nash, out of breath as though he'd been running, the thick padding of his province issued police bomber jacket doing little to keep out the Alberta cold. He confronted Dean, and the combined Jimmy and Castiel's open mouthed shock with a highly understated nod of his head. Dean couldn't understand it. He was so cool and calm. Like he'd been expecting them.

"Mom just called," he said to his father. "Monica stopped by all in a panic, saying she can't get into her bank account when she tried to pay her Hydro. Then Mona comes in, going on about how she got a nasty message on her voicemail saying she defaulted on her Visa bill."

"Your sisters can't get to their cash?" Dr. Nash paled. "Oh for God's sake, Frank the bank manager...He froze the wrong account!" He swore and checked his watch. "I should have known better than to have called him on a Friday night. He'll be boozing it up with a tall order of 200% proof Jamaican rum until daybreak. He was supposed to make sure you couldn't get to yours--Dammit, now I'm going to have those creepy harpy sisters of yours ganging up on me to fix it right away."

"Dad, why the hell are you freezing my bank account?"

Dr. Nash waved his hand emphatically at a still stunned Dean and Castiel. "Bad girlfriend. In town. Her sister's pimp had a seizure."

"He's not her pimp, he's her cousin," Paul Nash said, earning a gagging noise from his father, no doubt the spectre of incest now added to the Sam Winchester clan's mystique. "Dad, how many times do I have to tell you, I had to use that mortgage money for an emergency research trip to Istanbul. I told Monica and Mona all about it, they promised me they'd make sure my bills were in order but, as usual, my sisters pulled a fast one."

Dr. Nigel Nash was unrepentant. "Your sisters may be difficult at times, but they are the best neurosurgeons this side of the planet and you don't need to be wasting their time by making them clean up your life messes."

"They created that mess in the first place."

"You didn't have to go to Constantinople."

"Istanbul, Dad."

"I'm calling your mother. If that Sam Winchester shows up on her doorstep, she is not to feed her any of the leftover pot roast, hospitable politeness be damned! She'll get a cup of tea, the No-Name crap, not the good stuff from the tin, and it'll be weak and without sugar! And you can forget about biscuits! Bad girlfriend! No biscuits!"

Paul wordlessly watched his father storm off, the white lab coat he wore flapping behind him in tandem with his fury. Apparently long used to this accusatory form of abuse, Paul silently unzipped his black jacket, and took a deep, satisfying breath of calming air. "Ignore my father. He's a good doctor, he's just...Socially challenged," he said, apologetic. Then, his eyes shyly downcast, his voice a near whisper, both highly incongruent with the tough guy image his strong physique and military stance presented. "Is Sam with you?"

"She's around," Dean guardedly said.

Paul hesitated, his gaze fixed on the floor, the thick rubber of his boots teasing a small pile of slush that hadn't quite melted at this feet. "The nurse said a tall young man checked your cousin in. I take it that Simon, your brother, is also here." Paul bit down on words he clearly didn't want to say, a guttural growl that was uneasily swallowed.

"Has he hurt her?" he asked.

Dean wasn't sure just where Sam had gone with this particular story, and it disturbed her to know how deeply her sister held so much guilt and shame she'd felt compelled to give her currently fictional male self such a negative personality. "We managed to give him the slip back in Washington," Dean said, choosing her words with care. "But Simon's a real slippery bastard. He could show up at any time."

She stood in front of Paul, her hands hidden in the back pockets of her jeans. She nervously rocked back and forth, her feet scraping the heels of her too large sneakers. If Sam was still male, at least Dean had given Paul a good explanation if they ran into each other.

Castiel shifted in the bed. There was a soft rustling, like shifting feathers. Dean glanced over her shoulder to see Castiel had fallen asleep, in thanks no doubt to the vast collection of pharmaceuticals that had been pumped into him when he'd been first admitted, his heart stopping twice. His breath was uneven, stopping for long intervals, then slightly hyperventilating, then stopping. An alien rhythm.

The large, grey-blue hued nakedness of his wing that held so much personal mortification was now subconsciously draped around the angel's midriff. Paul was completely ignorant of the phenomenon, his attention on Castiel fleeting. A wave of relief hit Dean, only to be followed by more disturbing questions. Why was it she could see them? What did it mean?

Paul took out his notepad and a thin black pen. His script was carefully controlled as he wrote on it, the words and numbers formed in perfect, neat clarity. He tore the paper off and handed the note to Dean, who took it with grave reluctance.

"My address," Paul said, his voice so full of hurt you could have put his heart in traction. "Tell Sam I need to see her."

Dean carefully folded the small piece of paper and tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans. "I will," she promised.

"I won't let Simon get to her," Paul assured her.

Dean gave Paul a small, hopeful smile at this. Not knowing the full extent of Sam's alter ego 'Simon's history was proving to be a real problem. Next time she talked to Sam, Dean was hell bent on filling up a notebook.

Paul nodded at Dean, his expression significantly more tortured than Dean had anticipated. "I care about your sister very much," Paul said.

Unwilling, the memory of that cell phone recording came roaring back. Paul Nash, the keeper of the kinky keys. 'You sure do care, you poor schmuck,' Dean thought. 'Hell if I wasn't stuck between two forces of opposing good, I'd be making sure you cared about me, too.'

Paul turned off the light in their room, the softness of the spotlights outside of the window sending it back into sultry near darkness. Paul's face was hidden in shadow, the crisp lines of his jaw chewing on his concern. He didn't like the taste of it, Dean could tell. He kept working that jaw, silent and standing in the dark like he had something important to say and wouldn't. It was damn creepy is what it was. Dean shivered and moved closer to Castiel. Instinctively, she touched Castiel's shoulder for solidarity, her arm brushing against the soft feathers, the silken down distracting her fear. Castiel gently moaned in his sleep, a secretive kiss sighed upon the air, a name hovering within it. Dean...

Paul Nash raised his head into the shaft of light from the window, his eyes brought into blue, icebound relief. "I'm going to fucking kill him on sight. I won't let Simon live. Not after what that bastard did to my Sam." He glared at Dean, as though she were somehow responsible. "I won't let her be hurt. Not like that. Never again."

He left, a gap in the doorway where the massive depth of his presence had been. It had been a long time since anyone human had left Dean quaking in her boots. Dammit, she had to get a hold of Sam and tell her to get the girlsuit on quick.

Paul Nash was not a human who took his grudges lightly.


	12. Chapter 12

Author: pink_bagels (http://pink_.com)

Chapter: twelve

Rating: R (for swearing, sexual talk, crack!fic-ishness)

Characters: girl!Dean/Castiel/Jimmy, Bobby, girl!Sam/omc that looks like Hugh Dillon (w00t!), genderswap, Trickster, Alberta, Meg, angel molestation, TMI embittered health care professionals, etc.

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke. Not even if he had a sex change), it would hover somewhere in the middle of an AU season five.

Summary: What happened in Vegas wants to hunt you down and kill you. Too bad you gave that freaky chick Sam Winchester your cell number.

Note: Feedback is love! Even if you're telling me you hate i

a lingering fringe--chapter twelve

Washroom mirrors had terrible lighting. Her skin was sallow beneath its yellowed glow, the light too harsh and bringing every blemish to the fore. Black shadows hung beneath her eyes, her lips chapped and sore, her hair stringy and in need of a wash. They'd driven straight through Washington, and it had been a few days since they'd had the benefit of a proper sleep or a place to shower. The bruise at her clavicle had now faded to a greenish yellow, and she adjusted the strap of the brassiere until it was a thin black line over the top of it. She closed her eyes, feeling sick at the image of the thin, fragile scarecrow who had been reflected back in the mirror. She avoided that sickly woman's gaze, the stretchy black material pulled swiftly over her head, its waist adjusted appropriately beneath the small swell of her breasts. Just the right amount of cleavage, Sam thought, her fingers nervously adjusting the 'v' of the knit fabric at her bosom. Shaking hands dove into a purse she'd stolen from a young woman during a stopover in a mall when they left California. She took out the lipstick she'd found in it and applied it inexpertly, her trembling making matters worse. Cursing, she grabbed a tissue from the purse, and hastily wiped the offending make-up off. She'd try again. She'd steady her hand. She had to be authentic, she had to do this as if it were an everyday thing, as if it were effortless.

Just like Ruby had. Every day, on Sam's side, fighting to help him, steering him in the right direction. Sympathizing. Understanding. All the while just biding her time until the sharp tips of her claws could be sunk deep into his soul, to be brought to his lips so he could taste the bitterness of her latent, hidden hatred.

Sam adjusted the skirt of the dress down over her slim hips, the fabric neatly pleated into a gentle curve, the hem hugging just below her knee, the silk stockings she'd picked up at a beer run in Walgreens itching the tops of her thighs. She stepped out of her worn Nikes and into the patent leather flats she'd purchased for this purpose, already knowing better than to risk the foolishness of heels. They were as understated as the rest of her ensemble, which was now complete. No jewellery. No make-up. The dress shopworn, out of date. She forced her hands to remain steady as she reapplied the lipstick. It was the wrong colour for her, a vile pink that clashed with the olive tones of her skin.

Sam stepped back, surveying her work. She looked sick and tired and worn out by life. She looked vulnerable. She looked sorely abused.

"Good," she said to her reflection, her eyes glistening yellow as her confidence twisted in hatred.

///

The cool thing about small hospitals were their informality. The cafeteria was long since closed for the day, but the three microwaves for staff and public use were still available. Dean popped in a microwaveable lentils and rice with marsala curry meal into the first one, and waited for it to finish heating up. She glanced up at the various billboards and signs proudly displayed on the walls of the cafeteria. 'Rodeo '67'. 'Alberta Bound--Gordon Lightfoot, 1988 tour'. '100% pure Angus Beef'. The microwave beeped and Dean took the steaming, proudly vegetarian meal out of it. She made a face when she peeled back the cardboard covering, the sad grey lump that was dinner wholly unappetizing in its waxed cardboard casserole dish. She glanced up from this to the poster above the microwave proclaiming the mouth watering virtues of pure, Alberta beef, cooked just right on the grill. That steak looked so thick and juicy. Damn. Food porn. Got her every time. She poked at the near inedible fare she'd heated and tried to mentally replace the taste with the memory of a gorgeous steak. The whole visualization tack wasn't working.

"Dean."

Relief flooded through her at the sound of Sam's voice. She'd been worried sick that Paul would find her alter ego, and make good on his promise to kill 'Simon' on sight. She took another unwilling bite of the lentils and brown rice dish, swallowing the mush with effort and then tossing the rest into the waste can beside the microwaves. "You have no idea how glad I am that you are my sister right now," Dean said.

It was a good thing she was still hungry, because she was forced to eat her words. Sam had changed, all right, from head to toe by the look of things. If she considered becoming female one more gun in her arsenal, well, this one had to be filed in with the grenades. Sam was wearing a sleek black dress, for fuck's sake. A dress. It looked fantastic, with the option for maximum cleavage with just a few nudges from the shoulders. Dean wasn't too sure about the all black, though. To her it was morbidly funereal.

Dean tried to ignore the fleeting thought that it would look better in light blue, and was there one in her size?

"How does it look?" Sam asked.

"Like you should have got a size or two bigger," Dean observed.

"What are you talking about, it fits too loose as it is." She pulled on the waist, which had a few good inches of leeway. "See, I folded the extra fabric against my back with the belt," Sam said. "It's a good hiding spot for the demon knife."

"Yeah, right, Sammy. It's all about being practical on the hunt." Dean made her way to the candy dispensing machine and fed it a dollar bill. She chose a sad looking, dried up hamburger from the chilled selections. It fell through the slot like a stone and she picked it up, noting the vague remnants of ketchup lining its sides in pale orange hues. Dammit, that couldn't be good, but she was craving some protein no matter what form it came in, as long as it was originally bovine. She unwrapped the plastic wrap and turned back to her sister, who watched her eat it with a sneer of disgust. "What the hell, are you wearing lipgloss?"

"Authenticity," Sam quickly said. She smoothed the wrinkles of fabric at her hip with slightly tremulous palms. "Have you seen him?"

"Paul? Yeah." Dean took another bite of the near rancid hamburger, its beefy goodness making the plaque in her arteries sing. "You're lucky you're having a chick flick moment right now, Sammy. I don't know what the hell story you made up about Simon, your imaginary other half, but he's ready to go all atomic bomb on the guy. You got to give me the Cliff notes to this one."

Sam was uncomfortable, the grey shadows in the abandoned cafeteria casting her in unflattering shades of black and blue. "It's nothing you don't already know," she said, nervously knitting her fingers together. "I just drew on experience, that's all."

"He acted like he thought Simon was some mass murderer. Just what the hell kind of experience are you talking about?"

Sam drew in a shaky breath, guilt collecting in the shadows that plagued the exposed areas of her skin. "Ruby," she said, a near whisper. She noted well the flickering discomfort that moved like a frightened sparrow's wing between them. "Me. I didn't tell him the stuff about the demon blood, or anything to do with us hunting or the crazy things we've been through. He knows our father is dead, and he knows that you were out of the picture for a short while, and it was Simon's fault." Sam bit down on her emotions, her eyes glassy from the effort. "I told him I trusted Simon when I shouldn't have. That I wouldn't listen to you. That Simon betrayed me, and in turn everything we knew and loved was destroyed." Sam's voice hardened. "I wouldn't be so keen to believe in anything Paul says, Dean. He was responsible for killing that maneater in Vegas and there's a demon army on the edge of this town holding its breath until they get word on what he means to them. Not exactly a guy to be trusted."

Dean tossed the wrapper of the hamburger in the wastebasket and brushed the crumbs off her hands. "He was real upset. He was ready to do some righteous damage, all for your sake."

If Sam was swayed at all by this argument, she wasn't showing it. She hunched her shoulders, adjusting the knife she had hidden beneath the folds of her dress at the back, the handle no doubt pinching at her hip. "How is Castiel doing?" she asked.

Great. Another uncomfortable topic. "He's still pretty weak. He came to for a bit, him and Jimmy, at the same time which was kind of weird. Not as weird as his newest symptom, though." Dean shoved her hands in her pockets, and shifted from foot to foot, not sure how to disclose what she'd learned. "He's got wings, Sam. I can see them."

"Yeah, I know," Sam said, not getting the significance. "They're like shadows."

"No, what you saw are the shadows of actual, flapping, feathered wings." Dean flapped her hands, imitating a bird in flight while Sam looked on, incredulous. "I *touched* them, Sam. Totally freaked him out."

"You freaked out an angel?"

"What the hell was he expecting me to do, they are fucking *wings*, I had to be sure! How was I supposed to know they were the equivalent of, oh, I don't know...Angel boobies?"

"Booby wings," Sam tonelessly replied.

"Apparently, angels only allow them to be seen even amongst themselves during Private Angel Time between two consenting heavenly beings, so yeah, right now, to me, Castiel is topless and I accidently felt him up." Dean could feel a familiar pang rise like a surging heat up through her abdomen, her eyes closed at the memory. "They were so soft, Sam. It's hard to describe it, like sanded silk and then the way he made this little noise, from deep down in his throat and just kind of melted...Man, my palms are just itching to get my hands on them again, you know what I mean?"

"Not really," Sam confessed.

"I want to do him." There. She came right out and said it. A furious blush crept across Dean's cheeks at the admission. "I don't know what it is, I can't help myself. I want to pound him into that mattress he's lying on and not take no for an answer. I want to sex up Cas. What the hell is wrong with me?"

"I'm hardly the one to be looking to for answers," Sam reminded her.

"Yeah, but it was *good*, right?" Dean pressed. She grew annoyed with Sam's continued reticence on the subject. "I'm thinking maybe it's a hormone imbalance. I mean, my libido is always up to eleven, but honestly, when I get these extra legs on my Y chromosome it's like I'm Jenna Jameson on poppers."

That hamburger was leaving a hella bad aftertaste. Dean eyed the pop machine, figuring a bit of the old citric acid couldn't hurt. She fed it a couple of quarters, and it coughed up a Coke.

"Maybe this isn't about you," Sam said.

Dean opened the can, soft foam leaking out which she quickly sipped. After almost two weeks of nothing but bland health food, its toxic sweetness went down smoother than a cold beer.

"It could be Castiel. After all, he's the one with the angel mojo." Sam shrugged. "Maybe he's projecting his own feelings onto you."

Dean took another cold sip. "Yeah, but Cas doesn't know the difference between male and female humans. We're all just from the same template to him." An uneasy understanding tried to snake its way into Dean's consciousness, but she pushed it away before it gained a proper foothold. "I couldn't get a cell signal in here," Dean said, hastily changing the subject. "Maybe you could find a payphone, give your pal Paul a call and let him know you're alive and well."

"I want the element of surprise," Sam testily replied.

"Look, Sam..." Dean's hand was in her pocket, clutched tight around the slip of paper Paul had handed to her earlier. "I know you got burned in the past, but I have to tell you, I don't think Paul is demonic. I mean, you should have seen him, he was a wreck. He's worried sick about you." She took out the slip of paper and reluctantly handed it to Sam. "Just don't head straight for the fatal exorcism, okay? Even if he wasn't totally honest with us back in Vegas, he is killing off demons and that's got to count for something. He seems to be on our side."

Sam opened the slip of paper. Paul's neat, perfect handwriting clearly stating his address, deep strokes of the pen leaving imprints of the numbers and letters on the reverse side of the note. Darkness followed Sam's every movement, the black dress she wore an extension of the mood swirling in ashen cold around her heart.

"'Seems to be' isn't good enough," she darkly reminded her sister."


	13. Chapter 13

a lingering fringe--chapter thirteen

Dr. Nigel Nash was right. February in Alberta was a bitch.

Sam contemplated this as she stood on the porch of Paul Nash's house wearing nothing save this stupid, knit dress, a pair of stockings and a pair of patent leather flats that had pinched her toes into little shards of frostbite. She pushed her shoulders back and fluffed up her hair in a vain attempt to regain control of the situation, but it was difficult to look sexy and confident when her knees were knocking together so hard it felt like they were being used as cymbals.

She placed one hand behind her back, getting a good grip on the handle of the demon blade. This moment had been rehearsed hundreds of times in her mind, right down to stepping back as his body fell, the blood pooling on the steps as she retreated back to the escape provided by the trusty Impala. Granted, it was a little colder than her imagining, and it was difficult to keep a good grip on the knife with her hands trembling and raw from the wind's bite, but this was one mission she wasn't going to leave unfinished. Paul Nash had made his bed the second he'd decided to lie to her. What he did in Vegas was one hell of an unforgivable sin of omission.

It's a tiny house, Sam thought as she stood on the one step leading to the only door. Maybe one bedroom, laid out like a trailer home, except fashioned like some thimble sized brick bungalow. A quick glance at the low roof told her the house was heated by wood burning and the high grade solar panels provided electricity. There was a big outdoor hot water tank, too. That would take a good amount of time to heat up in this unforgiving cold. There were no main water lines leading in to the house, so it had to be using local well water.

Paul had told her about his house, during that night in Vegas, the one they spent at Kelvin's gig. Sam could still picture Castiel, his fingers fiercely shoved in his ears in a vain attempt to drive out the sinful din of Sex Pistols covers. In the seat beside him, a drunken Dean had lifted her tank top for free gin shots. Paul and Sam were at the bar, and he was talking about the pride he'd taken in the construction of his home in Alberta. He'd built it from the ground up himself.

"Off the grid," he had said to Sam. "No hydro bills, no cable, no utilities. All one hundred percent self contained in the middle of the Alberta wilderness."

"Sounds like fun." The noise in the bar was near unbearable, and Sam had to shout over her beer. She quickly glanced over her shoulder to see what new foolhardiness Dean was up to. Her sister was too busy getting hammered with the two guitar players in Kelvin's band, Castiel sombrely twiddling his thumbs at their table. Dean noisily fell onto it on her back, encouraging the fallen angel to sample a few Jell-O shots off of her navel. Castiel had remained impassive in the face of this chaos, looking every inch the holy tax accountant Dean had described him as, seeing as he was the only man in the club wearing a beige trenchcoat and a slightly rumpled suit and tie. Kelvin's drummer obliged Dean's experiment instead, Castiel's angry displeasure at this expressed in the single arch of his brow and the fierce tight line of his lips.

"This place is crazy," Sam said, but she was happy, even if the noise was giving her a headache. It felt good, sitting there, alone with Paul and talking about things that you didn't have to dump salt on and burn alive. He kissed her neck and she leaned into it, her senses on high alert should Dean witness it and forge an unwanted opinion. The wilderness, alone. Or maybe with one other person. One who knew exactly where her 'g' spot was located. 'Yeah,' Sam thought as her tongue wrapped around a rum flavoured ice cube. 'Country living is the bomb.'

"Sometimes, I think it would be nice to get away from it all," she said. "To not have to worry about things like work and the constant rush of people and their, you know...Conflicts. Being up there, all on your own. It must be so peaceful."

Paul leaned in close, his shoulder touching Sam's, his lips brushing against her cheek. "It's beautiful," he said. A simple fact. A given understanding. He tilted her head towards him with a strong hand clasped firm against the underbelly of her jaw. His kiss had no less violence attached, a forceful need parting her lips, his tongue diving deep, leaving the taste of chaos on her palate.

"If you ever need to disappear," he whispered to her. "All you ever have to do is show up on my front porch. I'll open the door, and once you walk in, you won't want to walk out."

"You're certain of that?" Sam said.

He kissed her again. Forceful. Dominating. A tiny sound wedged itself in her throat, muting her.

"It's inevitable," he said.

A gust of icy wind bit deep down the length of her back, pulling the skirt of her black knit dress halfway up her thighs. She grasped the handle of the demon blade, her hand twisted behind her, muscles tense and ready. When he opened that door, the only certainty would be that silver poison slicing through ashen bones and a still heart. His blood would run thick in the cold, staining the front porch in a brackish red river that she could drink from if she wanted to. It would run like an ignited line of explosive through her veins. Quickening her mind. Filling her thoughts with wild speculations of power.

The cold froze her tight grip around the handle in place.

She knocked on the door.

It swung open, and Paul stood in its frame. Without waiting, she was pulled in and pushed against the entranceway wall, his lips crushed against hers. His body was hot, steaming against the frigid cold of her skin, his hands a shocking warmth as they slid the hem of her dress up and over her waist, his jeans hanging off his hips, his thighs pushed between hers in burning contrast. The demon knife clatters to the floor, and she comes before he even enters her, his hot grip strong around her throat, her passion swallowed by his hungry tongue.

"I missed you," Sam manages to say. Paul bites her bottom lip so hard it feels bruised. "I wanted to hunt you down and kill you, I missed you so much."

"You were right there, on that porch. I was expecting you. Right up to the very second."

She wanted to ask him how he knew, what metaphysical formula comprised of human behaviour and need had he managed to wrestle into shape in order to conjure that knowledge. The question refused to be asked. He tore the offensive dress she wore over her head and tossed it to the floor. He braced his hands on the nude curves of her hips, her long legs wrapped around his back. How could you know this? her lips silently mouthed. She sank against him as he entered her, their bodies lined in sweat, his invasion so deep it felt like dying.

///

There was a sterile functionality to Paul's bedroom that surrendered no hint of the passion that could live within it. The comforter and sheets were all of the same, beige hue, crisp wrinkled cottons that did little to warm the cold room. Paul was on his back, and Sam lay curled beside him, her fingers tracing the curved lines of the tattoo on his chest. An atom the size of a grapefruit was etched into his skin in thick black lines, an orbit of swirling electrons. She followed the pattern in its elliptical spiral until she reached its powerhouse centre, a dense collection of colourful energy that forced her to stop. Paul stirred in his sleep, and he rolled onto his side, his lips brushing against the anti-possession tattoo on Sam's shoulder. Ensuring he was still asleep, she eased her way out from between the covers, grabbing Paul's sweater from the floor and pulling it over her head. She padded towards the small kitchen, its clean, uncluttered counters openly visible from the bed. Paul had set up the inside of the house in a stubborn open concept that made it look more art studio than single-story bungalow.

The focal point of the small house was the replacement of one outside wall in the bedroom with three massive, floor to ceiling double paned sheets of glass. A vast field of snow spread beyond it, a gorgeous winter scene perfectly framed, as though it were a giant photograph. The world outside the small house was starkly bare, with the blackened wisps of bare trees touching the far horizon. It was perfect in its simplicity. An envious measurement of peace.

The will to kill him had ebbed, and she found herself contemplating Dean's advice. The demon knife was still on the floor near the front door, taunting Sam with its promise of release. There was still the chance she may use it, if not now then later. But not this moment, not this cool, almost happy moment that bathed her in warm memories of strong arms and solely human desires. Strange as it was to admit it, being with Paul seemed to dull the edge of her demonic instincts. His flesh held a pulse. His lips a delightful, almost forgotten, warmth.

She splayed her hand on the window, mist surrounding it in a pulsing halo.

Barefooted, she retreated to the kitchen, the cold tiles chilling her feet so fiercely her knees ached. She fought the urge to call her sister and reassure her that one kind of disaster had been averted only for another, possibly worse scenario had taken its place. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Dean's argument added to the mix, Paul was no ally in their hunt to stop the apocalypse. Hard as it was to admit, the very attraction she had for him contained a familiar, unwelcome demonic touch. Lust lurked here. Obsession.

She opened the fridge door, searching for something to eat. It was filled with beer bottles and sandwich meats and a decided lack of bread. The wind outside howled, and Sam shivered, and realizing her body was seriously craving something hot, she began rummaging through the cupboards, searching out elusive hot chocolate mixes, instant coffee or tea.

They were mostly barren, and Sam had to wonder how often Paul actually cooked for himself. Granted, with his parents in town, he probably still had a lot of invites for dinner from his mother. He was a big enough guy, so he wasn't starving. Mom's pot roast and tea and biscuits. The building blocks of a bachelor who had been without a girlfriend for too long.

She pulled open what she had thought was a cutlery drawer, only for it to reveal a large pile of papers and folders, secreted in a haphazard arrangement that bordered on messy. The drawer beneath it had a likewise appearance, this one deeper and stocked full with medical textbooks, and a colourful illustrated copy of A Brief History Of Time. She pulled the volumes out, and leafed through the pages, the thick medical text daunting in its stark honesty over the inward workings of the human body. The other was an extended tome of astronomy that gave an equal dissection of the heavens. She stacked them both on the countertop and dug further into the drawer, finding odd notebooks full of math equations, complex geometry, illustrations of the human abdomen, entrails neatly labelled, all exposed musculature exhaustively detailed. There were notes scribbled hastily around it, numbers and letters, and strange symbols that were, upon closer inspection, reminiscent of both demon and angel talismans. She closed the bottom drawer and returned to the top where, beneath the archeological exhuming of ancient bits of newspaper clippings and watch gears, were several manila folders, much neater in their composition than the mess that had hidden them. She pulled them out, knowing what they were without even opening them. Case files. Stolen from his precinct.

She opened the first one, its edges dog eared, the pages within it yellowed. Sam was wrong, this wasn't a file Paul had stolen from his own office, this was an American case. Las Vegas specific. A cold case file dating back to 1975, involving the disappearance of a young mother who had shown up in Sin City looking for work. She'd left her son with the babysitter on a Friday afternoon in June and never returned. She was a known heroin addict. No one took much notice that she was missing, and her son went into foster care.

Bridgette Furlough went missing, and her case went stone dead cold.

The image of the woman in Dean's seventies porno flick stared back at Sam. It had been taken a few months before she'd arrived in Las Vegas, her body set to be used by demon and human alike, her dreams of being a good provider for her son desiccated into the Nevada sands. What was this desperate woman doing here, in Paul Nash's frozen tundra? She was smiling in the photo, wearing a flowered bikini, her skin tanned, her teeth white. She didn't belong here, not even in thought. She was made for hot, sandy beaches and bad decisions and sandals that fit too tight.

Sam turned the picture over. Written on it, in blue ink that was much fresher than the photo itself, was a long series of mathematical equations, its complex reference lost to Sam. There was a lack of cohesion to it that bothered Sam, a lack of true rhythm that would hint that this was anything even related to the science of numbers. What it really was, Sam realized, was a cipher. A highly confused code that ran from left to right and right to left.

At the bottom of the photograph was the solution to the strange puzzle. Three words, written in precise, black script. Averus Souberet Soulis. Sam turned the photo over, the letters pressed so deep they cut a relief through Bridgette Furlough's midsection.

Curious, Sam thumbed through the rest of the file. The same blue pen had scribbled notes over the newspaper clippings, circling the ads for casinos and random letters within the articles. Grabbing a blank piece of paper off of a writing pad near the phone, Sam wrote the random letters and numbers down. It took a few minutes of rearranging, but Sam had long been adept at deciphering this type of clinical deception.

321 Starlight Street. Las Vegas, Nevada.

Sam knew that address well.

It was the diner where the meateater had her last meal. Where Paul had kissed Sam and said his heartfelt good-bye.

She glanced at the bed, where he lay snoring, his breath rising and falling in blissed content.

Traitor. Liar.

The usual. Nothing new.

Sam pushed the papers and incriminating manila envelopes back into the drawers, ignoring the arrangement they were originally placed in. She left the two books on the counter, along with Bridgette Furlough's case file, figuring Paul might want to brush up on some light reading while he worked on how else to completely destroy her sense of trust. She grabbed his jeans off the floor and slid them on, tying the belt tight around her waist to prevent them from falling off. He'd made one hell of a miscalculation in his stupid pattern recognition formula. She snatched the demon blade from where it had fallen near the front door, its handle smooth, the contours so perfect against her palm it was as if it was fashioned especially for her. The lust pulsing through her now was bent on killing. She'd plunge the blade in his heart, as she'd promised. No lying jackass was going to use her up like he just did.

Sam crept to the bed, her knees crawling over the surface of the beige comforter, the demon blade glinting silver and sharp in the sepia tones within the tiny house. 'I should be male when I do this,' was a fleeting thought. 'My shoulders will be broader, and my arms are more powerful. I could really pound this knife in, and when the cops come crawling they would be looking for a male perpetrator, not a female." The tip of the blade gently met Paul's tattoo, its nucleus set to go atomic. He was still sleeping so peaceful, blissfully unaware of just how close he was to a very painful, bloody death.

Her hand was shaking as she travelled the blade upward, to the nape of his neck. To the pulsing rapture of his jugular. But there was no sustenance in Paul, no demon blood that sang in rhythm with her own. She wanted to plunge the knife in, to end this weird standoff she'd found herself confronted with, but try as she might her shaking hand simply wouldn't complete the deed. With firm resolution, she loosened the belt of Paul's jeans, and with one very forced flex of that muscle she morphed into the male version of himself. Now he could do it, Sam reasoned. There wasn't, like Dean insisted, all those stupid hormones in the way.

But it was a terrible thing to realize that even now Paul's hold was firm, that no matter how much he tried to press the blade against the strong but yielding flesh Sam simply couldn't commit to murdering him. If anything, there was still the fascination with his smooth skin, his strong arms, his soft lips that had done amazing things to her body. He moved the tip of the blade along the underside of Paul's jaw, and, with a rush of feeling he didn't expect, Sam captured Paul's mouth, lips crushed, tongue searching for words that would explain everything.

He broke away and pressed the back of his hand to his lips, recoiling, horrified at what he'd just done. He could understand attraction, as a female, the biochemistry was obvious. But this...This was complicated. This was beyond simple lusts and the need for physical contact. Sam tried to mentally articulate it, coming up with hollow, meaningless clues that were too simple to be the answer. This couldn't possibly be all about admiring Paul's ecological vision in making this house, or enjoying the time spent at a punk revival with him. There was no way it was because of how he got Sam thinking over the complex ideas he wove into every conversation. It wasn't because he had a way of making Sam feel one hundred percent human. That was just crazy.

Dammit. Male or female, it clearly didn't matter. Sam really liked Paul Nash. In. That. Way. Because, for whatever reason, this was more than just snatching an awesome lay. This was...

Hormones, hormones. This had to be nothing but hormones.

Very convincing. The lie was almost believable.

He flexed that muscle and he became her once again. She captured his lips into another hungry embrace, the lull of the demon knife forgotten. She would let him live because she needed answers. That was the shallow version she was going to feed her sister. There was no way she'd reveal more than this because even if blood was thicker than water, some things just had to be private. Especially things like she'd just kissed a boy when she was, well...A boy.

Right. As if life as a Winchester wasn't complicated enough.

Paul sleepily groaned into her mouth, and she gently broke free of him so as not to wake him. He had to be having interesting dreams by now. The demon knife slid into the back pocket of Paul's borrowed jeans, the belt buckled tight around her waist. She slid silently off the bed, and padded back to the kitchen, where she picked up the photograph she had taken out of Bridgette Furlough's stolen file and pocketed it. The manila folder remained on the kitchen counter, and Sam left it there, a small taunt against Paul's game. A large, fresh red stamp dated the day after the maneater incident lay smudged on its surface, red ink congealed in a thick blob in one corner of the folder. 'Case Closed' the stamp read.

"Not by a long shot," Sam whispered.


	14. Chapter 14

a lingering fringe--chapter fourteen

Castiel was awake when Dean walked back into his room, and he was amiably chatting with a redheaded nurse who was checking his vitals. His wings were casually exposed, a fact that irked Dean even if she was the only one who could see them. She crossed her arms and gave the perky redhead the barest of nods.

"He's doing much better," the nurse cheerfully informed Dean. "Everything has stabilized, and his blood pressure has risen to normal levels. If he keeps this up he'll be discharged by morning." She made a note in her chart. "I know he's a real hothead and has a nasty case of verbal diarrhoea, but Dr. Nash is a very good doctor. As you heard, emergency isn't exactly his specialty, but your friend has done all right by him." She gave Castiel a warm smile and a gentle pat on the arm. "He brought you back from the brink of death. Not bad for a gynaecologist."

Dean choked and Castiel looked blankly on. "A gynaecologist. Really."

"Oh yes," the nurse replied. "The best one in the region. Women from Calgary make special pilgrimages here just to have him as their doctor. His paper on ovarian cysts revolutionized standard treatment here. They named a wing after him at Rockyview General because of it." She made another note in Castiel's chart, her soft blue eyes shaded prettily with long, black lashes. "You know, I used to date his son, Paul Nash. He's the sheriff of Esther now." She glanced from side to side, ensuring no one was there to overhear them before turning her confidence on Dean like a sucker punch to her stomach. "We were sixteen. Up there, in Paul's bedroom, fooling around, like sixteen year olds do. I'll never forget it, his father marches in, catches us and orders us to get dressed and get downstairs. I'm shaking in my skivvies, thinking oh no, he's going to call my parents. I'd lied to them and told them I was at my friend Marsha's, so my goose was cooked."

"I guess your dad gave Paul a pile of whoop ass over that one," Dean said.

But the nurse shook her head. "Oh, no that isn't what happened!"

She gave Dean's questioning raised brow a giggle. "You two have the same expressions," she said, looking past Dean's shoulder at Castiel. "It's so cute. It's nice to see such a close couple. Are you married?"

"We do possess a deep spiritual bond," Castiel answered.

"Yeah, I never bothered with the marriage thing, either." She made a face, her nose scrinching, making her look like red squirrel. "After my first divorce, I vowed never to walk the gauntlet of relatives again. All I can hear, over and over, is my slutty Aunt Shirley Parker going on about how it won't last. You could barely hear the priest, she was so loud." She let out a sad sigh. "So, anyway, Dr. Nash has us in his living room, and instead of berating us for doing what comes naturally, he starts in on a long lecture about human sexuality and the female orgasm and proper stimulation, because it was obvious from the little he'd accidentally seen that Paul was doing it wrong."

"I'm sure this didn't psychologically scar Paul in any way at all," Dean sardonically observed.

The nurse was instantly on the defensive. She tossed her shoulder length red hair over her shoulder in a huff. "Are you kidding? That information was *gold*! I dumped Paul and started going out with my now ex-husband." She clutched the clipboard containing Castiel's chart close to her chest, nearly swooning with pleasant memories. "Believe me, we didn't split up due to the sex. Thanks to Dr. Nash, I always got my bulls-eye." She gave Dean a saucy wink. "You can lock the door if you want privacy," she said as she cheerfully left the room. "That curtain goes over the blinds, too, so nobody can get their peepers in."

"Thanks," Dean said, closing the door behind the nurse, not so much for privacy as the need to keep her TMI out of their earshot. "Geez, some people can't keep anything to themselves," Dean said to Castiel.

"What's a gynaecologist?" Castiel asked, but it was Jimmy who answered.

"He's a guy who specializes in vaginas. No wonder he's always got that stupid goofy grin on his face, he has every straight man's dream job." He rolled his eyes in frustration at Castiel's continued ignorance. "Okay, for your frame of reference, he's like a wing specialist. Makes sure they're healthy and ready for flight."

"We don't have...'wing specialists'...in Heaven," Castiel replied.

"Obviously," Dean said.

She sank into the uncomfortable plastic chair by Castiel's bed, a growing sense of unease at Sam's continued absence lurking in her gut. Traumatic teen years aside, Paul Nash was clearly known well around here and beyond, thanks to his infamous father. If Sam had hunted him down and killed him, it was going to be a tight squeeze out of Esther to keep ahead of the authorities. Not to mention Meg and her big demon love-in waiting for them as well. They could switch on the boy channel, maybe confuse the issue when they hit the reset dial while they were being pursued. Boy and girl back and forth until the law didn't know what to look for anymore.

It was cold in the room, and Dean shrugged on her jean jacket, her wallet falling out of the side pocket onto Castiel's bed. The angel picked it up and wordlessly began to leaf through it with bored distraction, the various fake IDs and FBI badges and a dozen or more credit cards with different names added to the criminal mix. She'd have to get some female ID eventually, Dean thought. And a bigger wallet to hold them all.

"Who are these people?" Castiel asked in his bland, almost accusatory way. He held up a small Polaroid that was faded into pink and brown hues.

Leave it to an angel to find the most uncomfortable piece of evidence in a Winchester's wallet.

"That's Sam," Dean said, pointing to the tow-headed toddler at his father's feet, a rifle balanced unevenly beside him. An awkward boy stood on the other side of Sam, unsmiling, his expression sullen. He held a glock in his right hand, the barrel of the gun dwarfing the innocence that had been snuffed out so early in his life. "That's me," she said to Castiel, and then, pointing to the tall man between the two children, "That's my father. John Winchester."

"Not your typical happy family," Jimmy noted.

Castiel was more forgiving. "I can see that your father loved you very much. It is reflected in his eyes." Castiel's observation shifted as he took in the strained postures of the children, the haunted glares into the camera. "But he is a man driven beyond the point of obsession. He dragged his children into his personal war. That was a very selfish thing for him to do."

There was once a time when Dean would have railed against this, defended her father as a man with a righteous vision, one destined to save the world one snuffed out monster at a time. But as she looked on the photograph and its sad evidence of a traumatized childhood, she had to wonder what her father was thinking in bringing up Sam and Dean the way he had. Lives full of ammo, gunpowder and rocksalt fed to them like pablum. He'd claimed they were to be his soldiers, but there was, despite all outward appearance, a highly personal edge to John Winchester's quest. There was anger, deeply smoke-screened with visions of a holy crusade. The supernatural elements had been around long before the Winchesters had arrived on the scene, but John stubbornly lacked acceptance of them.

He'd said he had no choice, but he did with Adam. Another son. One who had never known the touch of evil on his shoulder for most of his young life, a blissful ignorance that burned a bitter ache inside of Dean, regardless of how that hate caught up and Adam met his end. John had taken him fishing. Fishing, for fuck's sake.

What would his father think now, Dean thought, seeing her here, a daughter and not an unfortunate son? Would he have placed the same expectations on them, the same drive to be good, obedient little soldiers? Dean had to wonder if she'd be placed in the same situation she was now, the protector and potential killer of her little sister, automatically expected to do anything in the name of self-sacrifice for the greater good. Perhaps if they'd been girls it would have softened her father's harsh expectations.

But Dean knew better. John Winchester wasn't a man who went halfway about anything in life or death. She shuddered to think just how far he might have gone ensuring that Dean or Sam fulfill whatever missions he felt they had to accomplish. She couldn't say with full conviction that her father would never have considered using their sex as a weapon. He had such tunnel vision at times. Whatever it took to get the job done.

"Dean?"

A glassy veil cut through her vision, and with fumbling hands she shoved the worn Polaroid back into her wallet, along with the various scattered pieces of ID. She shoved it deep into the pocket of her jean jacket, swearing that at some point in her life she was going to take a lighter to that damn picture, and happily watch it slowly burn.

"How are you doing?" she asked. "Still lacking a chunk of that angel mojo of yours?"

"I have never experienced this type of feeling before," Castiel admitted. "As though all energy has been siphoned from me. It is an effort just to talk to you." Castiel closed his eyes, his head turning away from her as he tried to get comfortable on the pillow. "You feel this same kind of pain every day, do you not?"

"What, you mean exhaustion?"

"A version of it. Yes."

Sure, she understood being tired. Hell, sitting here, right now, running on less than an hour's sleep in two days and wallowing in uncomfortable thoughts on family dynamics, Dean was more than tired, Dean was downright dead. She shifted in the uncomfortable chair, and stared at Castiel's mattress and his pillow with nothing short of jealous longing.

Castiel's head turned towards her, but it was Jimmy's consciousness putting her in his sights. "You haven't slept in days," he said to her.

Dean sighed, and rested her the back of her head against the wall. "Sleep is over-rated."

"You look kind of sick."

"Yeah? Gee, Jimmy, you sure know how to butter up a girl."

"You don't have to suffer," he said to her, genuinely concerned. He moved to the right, creating a small space in the hospital bed. "Come on, catch twenty." He gave her an insincere grin. "I'll try not to grope you."

Dean groaned at Jimmy's seemingly heartfelt offer. "Give me a break, Jimmy. I know a lame excuse to get laid when I see one, so quit it with the soft and caring act."

It was Jimmy's turn to be angry. "Okay, fine, I want to get laid, but that's a low blow, saying I don't care. If I didn't care, I wouldn't be talking to you now, I'd be sitting in Cas's waiting room, watching the universe spin past my consciousness." He pressed his hand over Dean's, its warmth soothing. "I know what it's like to be dragged somewhere you don't want to be. We're comrades in that regard, aren't we?"

He stroked her arm, softly, and Dean couldn't resist melting into the gentleness of the touch. "I don't know, Jimmy. I don't think you get it. It's not the same thing."

"Isn't it?" Jimmy pressed. "I'm sharing my body, my physical self, with an angel who has little regard for what it needs, either emotionally or physically. More than half the time, I'm stuck in that stupid little inward room, watching everything going on, completely cut off from participating. It's a horrible feeling, being so separated from myself. An angel's consciousness, it's so freaking *big*. I'm like a tiny fragment." His touch lay static on her thigh, all fight torn from him. "In the big scheme of heaven and hell, so little about me matters."

"Yeah, I guess you do get it," she said, nodding sadly.

Jimmy wasn't so sure. "Maybe," he said. His fingers played along the center of her thigh, tracing the lines of blue in her jeans.

Dean could feel the sting of shame burning her, hot unshed tears swallowed stubbornly back. "When I was in hell, all I knew was pain. When I think back, and I try to figure out what my body was, what shape, what itype/i--I can't. It's like I was made up nothing but this constant, unbearable, never-ending torture." Her cheeks burned in shame, but to hell with it, confession had to be good for the soul. Especially when it was with someone who genuinely shared in the misery. Jimmy dared to brush her cheek with the back of his hand, and she leaned into it as though it were a taut lifeline, the black smoke of memory pulling her deep. "When I woke up in that grave, when I could feel what it was like, being physical, being *alive*--I took that first breath, and it all came back. All the stuff I'd been missing. So many more parts to my soul than just that goddamned pain. Part of me wants to be weirded out by this whole male and female thing Sammy and I got going on, but honestly, Jimmy, it feels more like some kind of gift than a curse. Like I had nothing, I *was* nothing for so long, and now I have the power to have more physical life than I know what to do with."

"I'm not even going to pretend to know what it was like in hell," Jimmy quietly said to her. He clasped her hand in his, and she twined her fingers into his grip, grateful for the attempt at understanding. "It makes me sick inside, knowing that happened to you. You never deserved it. It wasn't fair."

She felt an inward shock at Jimmy's simple outburst. Not fair. Had she ever thought that of her predicament? So much of her suffering was based on the strong will of destiny, on the decided lack of choice. Strange, after all that arguing and constant battling over one bad choice after another it was so easily summed up in the phrase 'no fair'.

She was fit to drown here, and without waiting for a further invitation, she crawled into bed with Jimmy, her lips crushing against his. She made a point, no matter how tempting they were, not to touch Castiel's wings. This was a private moment, between two human beings. No supernatural entities and their big steaming piles of baggage allowed.

"This doesn't mean anything," she reminded him. That's right, Dean, she silently chided herself. This is just desperation and the need for human comfort and hella damn, Jimmy's hands are *hot*..."I'm just curious," she said as her defence. "Sammy got to try out the goods, so why can't I?"

Jimmy's hands slid up Dean's side, taking her t-shirt with them. The cold air of the room bit into her skin, the warmth of Jimmy's hands as they cupped and teased her breasts coursing a thrill through her that made her breath catch.

"I love you, Dean," Jimmy said.

At least, she was pretty sure it was Jimmy.

"Shut the fuck up," Dean angrily replied, and kissed whoever the fool was with tongue searing ferocity.

///

"You're right. It is beautiful."

Dean stood at the window, her words lost on the snoring figure in the hospital bed, the heart monitor quietly blipping out an unsteady beat. The town of Esther lay blanketed in a thick covering of snow that suffocated all attempts to mar its pristine perfection. It was impossible to determine where the horizon split from earth into sky, the vastness stretched long into an infinite void of blue-bruised white. "So peaceful. Like the universe is holding its breath."

Castiel stirred in his bed and sat up, a flutter of wings as he stretched them to get out the kinks from lying on them for so long. He'd already stopped caring that Dean could see them, his embarrassment broken by his voyeuristic participation in Dean and Jimmy's lovemaking. "You've been standing there for over an hour," he said. He rubbed sleep from the corners of his eyes with the heel of his hand. "Jimmy is exhausted, and yet you are exhilarated. It's a strange dichotomy."

Dean gave Castiel a strained smile. "Yeah, well, I guess it's all that adrenaline, what with how you decided to break in and almost ruin a really awesome moment."

"We've been over this," Castiel impatiently replied.

"I want to go over it again," Dean insisted.

"You were crying hysterically," Castiel said, confused. "I thought he was injuring you."

"It's called an orgasm, Cas," Dean said, trying to keep her voice even and not rise, once again, into a furious tirade like she had earlier. The shot of Ativan the harried redheaded nurse had administered with the stab of a needle into Dean's thigh helped keep her temper at an even keel. "I was having a really, really good orgasm." She gave him a grin that was more manic than she intended, her words pleasantly intoned through clenched teeth. "I would have liked to have had another one. Because, gosh darn it, I was well on my way."

"Your mind was full of profanity and you thought you were dying."

"What a fantastic way to go it would have been." Dean sat on the edge of the bed and bent over Castiel, her cleavage amply noted as was the red blush of her lips as she spoke against his. "If through some miracle there is a next time where Jimmy and I actually do manage to get it on again, you are not, repeat, not allowed to interfere. You are not to haul him off of me and berate him for his 'harmful lusting', you are not to fill his thoughts with memories of that time he accidentally saw his ninety-seven year old grandmother nude in the shower, just to kill the mood, and you are not, I say it again, not to try to backpedal on your mistake and finish what Jimmy started on your own, because I'm telling you, Cas, you don't know have first clue on how to please me. I went from being about to open the pearly gates of Heaven to crashing flat on my face back to Earth, specifically grey linoleum. I'm getting a bruise on my jaw, you know, this part of my face, here, the part that broke my fall out of the bed? Hell of a buzz kill, Cas." She grabbed him harshly by the wing, Castiel's expression morphing from confusion into intense desire into outright pain. "You do that to me again, and so help me God, I'll pluck your feathers like a chicken and BBQ you on a propane grill, got it?"

"It needn't have been such a disaster," Castiel snapped, his wing wrenched out of her grip. "Jimmy could have easily given me instructions. Hrm. He just twisted his kidneys. Very painful. I wish he wouldn't be so vindictive."

"You guys had better start learning to co-operate, because I'm telling you, this body," Dean gestured to the awesomeness that was Herself. "This body ain't going near either of you until you do."

There was a knock at the door, and Dean opened it to allow her sister in. Sam closed and locked the door behind her, the blinds and curtains at the window tested to be sure the room was ensconced in absolute privacy. "We got issues," Sam announced.

"Tell me about it," Dean replied. She gave her sister's appearance a good once over. "I see you lost the dress. I take it Paul Nash is still alive and kicking, or you traded rags with his corpse. Considering the toxic ooze that is his family, I'm sure it's nothing Dr. Nash wouldn't expect." She gave Sam's hooded glare a sleepy smile. "Ditching that thing was a good idea, you looked like a slut. I can handle you being my sister, honestly I can, but that whole 'Tootsie' scenario?" Dean involuntarily shuddered. "Dude, I was ready to turn your ass over to the fashion police myself."

Sam marched to Castiel's bedside, the heart monitors and various IVs brought into her careful inspection. Without warning, she began taking the needle out of his arm, stemming the flow of blood with the sleeve of her sweater. "I'll set the heart monitor on a loop, so they won't know he's gone," Sam said. "He has to come with us."

"Whoa, hey, he's not going anywhere!" Dean stood between Sam and the bed, the IV needle held aloft when Dean grabbed it from her sister. "I don't know if you noticed, but this is one sick angel!"

Sam wasn't feeling especially charitable. "We need Cas to come with us because I don't know what I'm going to find at the precinct," Sam explained. "If it's what I'm suspecting, we're in bigger trouble than running into a demon army when we hit the highway out of here."

Sam rummaged through the pockets of Paul's stolen jeans and pulled out a small, faded black and white photograph. Dean took it and mulled it over, the now familiar figure of Bridgette Furlough staring back at her. There was a line of letters imprinted through her midsection, and Dean turned the photograph over, her heart skipping exactly three beats when she read the words that had been so deeply pressed on it in neat, black ink.

"See what it says?" Sam said, stating the obvious. "iAverus Souberet.../i"

"iSoulis./i" Dean finished. She folded up the photograph and the image of Bridgette with it, crumpling it further in her tight fist. "I know that name. At least, the end part of it." She felt sick at having to bend to Sam's impatient pressing for more information. "Soulis was a demon I'd met. In hell."

Dean could touch the awkward pain of that moment's revelation, with Sam giving her that look that spoke of guilt and remorse and Dean's own shame hovering back, feeling a likewise pang that held pieces of the end of the world within it. Hell was never a comfortable topic between them, and revealing she actually got to know a few of the bastards in there personally wasn't exactly an easy admission.

"There is much power in a name."

Castiel was wide awake now, and was quietly getting dressed, the heart monitor beeping over an invisible heartbeat, the oxygen tubes on the floor, likewise the IV needle, which bled droplets of saline onto the cold, grey linoleum floor. He buttoned up his white shirt, which was still miraculously pressed and clean. "All beings in Heaven and Hell are given three names at their creation. They are private, known only to them alone." He stepped hastily into his black slacks, white shirt tucked tight into the waist. "One, or two components of the name can be used. But never all three."

He pulled on his black socks, his leather shoes slid on, the laces tied with fumbling fingers.

Kind of in a hurry, this angel.

"You have three names too?" Dean asked.

Castiel was painfully guarded. He wouldn't answer the seemingly innocent question. "What do you hope to find at the precinct?" he asked Sam, his arms shrugging into the now familiar fit of his beige trenchcoat.

"More answers," Sam said, confident. "I got the impression that the files at his house were just some overnight homework he brought in. He'd need a lot of reference materials for the kinds of symbols and mathematics I saw him using. You can see it, here." Sam motioned for Dean to give her back the photograph, which was now wrinkled and damaged from Dean's subconsciously fearful grip. She smoothed it out, and showed Castiel the series of numbers and symbols that ran from right to left and left to right in a precise square. "It's a cipher," she explained. "Some kind of code, and Paul cracked it. I don't know how, or where he's getting the information, but there were all kinds of weird things in that file. Map locations, newspaper clippings about Vegas that were only marginally related to the case. An astronomy textbook. A heavily annotated illustration of the digestive tract. Nothing correlated with this name, and yet he managed to find it."

But Castiel wouldn't take the photograph from Sam's hand, if anything Dean noticed the angel seemed to shrink away from it. "We are wasting time," he said, and Dean was surprised at how all Heaven's Army business he was, taking charge and marching out of the room so fast Sam and Dean were forced to follow him. The only hint of his latent illness was his chalk-white pallor and the odd, uneven rhythm of his breathing. "If he has deciphered more names, we need to find them immediately."

Dean hung back with Sam, eyes locking in confidence with her sister. "You go into the precinct, and Cas and I will hide round the rear entrance. I'll watch your back," Dean assured her.

"I don't know, Dean, maybe if this stuff is as powerful as Cas thinks it is I should have him in the precinct with me." Sam shrugged. "I mean, it can't hurt to be cautious, right?"

Dean watched as Castiel, with a smooth, clear confidence that grated on something in her gut, left the front door of the hospital, his ethereal presence making little impact on the blank white universe that was the hospital parking lot.

"Caution," Dean said, her eyes narrowing as they stepped out into the cold. "You got that right, Sammy."


	15. Chapter 15

a lingering fringe--chapter fifteen

by pink bagels

Dean had to wonder where Sam's sudden glossy understanding of style came from, because it sure as hell wasn't from their usual flannel and blue jeans sensibility. Sure, she was wearing Paul's clothes--a fact that annoyed Dean further because it meant Sam had done the deed, had her fun and got on with it, unlike herself--but somehow Sam, with her sleeker feminine form and unconsciously graceful bearing, exuded a sophisticated confidence that would have incited envy in Bella. For God's sake, the way she held her chin high like that, with her long limbs, and her pouty mouth--Sam could be a damned Calvin Klein ad. No wonder Paul was such a miserable mess over her.

"I like 'em curvy," Dean said, inexplicably angry. "When I'm a guy, that is."

"What?" Sam said. Her face twisted into confused, ugly contours, her sophistication slipping. Dean already felt better.

"Chicks. I like 'em curvy."

"Count me in," Jimmy eagerly added from the back seat. "I like a bit of meat on my girl."

"You said it, Jimmy," Dean said, grinning back at him through the rear view mirror. Yeah, that's the ticket. After that romp at the hospital, Jimmy was keen to have himself a bit more of the Dean cherry pie. "Nothing like a healthy serving of bust and chops, am I right?"

"I find lean lines and delicate constructions especially pleasing," Castiel said.

Ah yes, the master mood killer had to get his opinion in. Dean seethed at the wheel. It might be minus forty degrees Celsius, but man you could *hear* crickets chirping.

"No one asked you," Dean snapped at him.

"Why are you even bringing up this topic?" Sam asked.

Dean bit the inside of her cheek, enjoying Sam's sudden discomfort. When they were brothers instead of sisters, jibing was as natural as breathing, and was expressed through the usual route of cracks about Sam's messy 'do or his weird preference for Sufjan Stevens over Pink Floyd. Sam would either laugh it off or shoot back at him with some backhanded insult of his own. Peacock machismo posturing, back and forth. It was the American Male Way.

But, Dean had to concede, this whole passive aggressive thing the girls had going on was a hell of a lot more powerful. The insults were more subtle, with a competitive edge to them that wasn't about bringing your subject into your camp. This was slow erosion. A tiny negative point thrown out at random to unsettle your BFF, who would obsess about it at length. Much the way Sam was, now.

"What, are you saying I'm too skinny?"

"I didn't say anything like that at all," Dean replied.

Sam brooded further as she sunk into her seat and Dean had to fight to keep her glee at this secret. Damn, this was one effective tool in keeping the pecking order in check. No wonder Rizzo of Grease fame was such a bitch, this kind of power was addictive. 'I probably would have been Rizzo, if I was a chick in high school," Dean thought. But they had a different term for chicks like that nowadays, and Dean frowned over how it encapsulated the phenomenon far too perfectly.

"I would have been a Mean Girl," she muttered.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Nothing. It's nothing."

Sam let out a steamed breath of air, its remnants blocking her view out of the passenger window. "I might a be a while in there. I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for."

Dean drummed her fingers nervously on the steering wheel. "I'd feel a lot more comfortable if you took Cas in there with you. The guy turns demons into salt, Sam. That's powerful mojo, no matter how you slice it."

"I'll be fine," Sam stubbornly replied.

The town of Esther's precinct was a tiny building the size of a park rest-stop, a simple grey box that sat lonely and near abandoned in a parking lot that boasted of three spaces, presumably for the sheriff, the deputy and the lawyer for the accused. Dean pulled into the lone visitor spot and turned the key in the ignition. February winds howled over the Impala, flash-freezing its interior with an intensity that surprised them. "We are heading to Texas after this gig," Dean said, her hands clutched tight under her armpits for warmth. "I'm sick to death of the Land Of The Lost And Frosted." She pulled her jean jacket closer, but denim wasn't designed to keep out a chill. Sam unbuckled her seat belt, her hand on the passenger door handle.

"Dudette, are you wearing ilipgloss/i?"

"It's chapstick, Dean," Sam impatiently replied. "It's minus forty degrees Celsius out there. Even my tongue has freezer burn."

Dean paused a long moment before giving Sam a pleading look. "Let me borrow it."

"What? Ew, no, Dean, I'm not sharing my chapstick, that's gross!"

"What the hell, Sam, are you Napoleon Dynamite now? Give me the fucking chapstick!"

Cursing, Sam reached into her jeans pocket and tossed the small cylinder to Dean. She put it on immediately, humming over the pleasant taste. "Root beer flavour. Awesome." She tried to hand it back, but Sam outright refused to take it.

"I'll buy a new one," she said, and stormed out of the car, slamming the door behind her.

Dean pocketed her prize, and pressed her lips tight together, ensuring her lips were in root beer scented softness. That's right, Sam, take all the time you want, Dean thought as she caught a glimpse of Castiel in the back seat, his profile framed in grayish blue wings. Dean forced herself to keep an eye on her sister, and watched as she attempted to break into the front door of the precinct, only to stop when she realized the door wasn't locked. Sam should have known better. Esther wasn't exactly a hub of criminal activity, or any excitement, for that matter. If the poster back at the hospital had meant anything, it meant the highlight of their year was roasted cow. This time of year, people probably left their doors unlocked out of hope of getting robbed. At least it would give them all something to talk about over hot cups of coffee and chunky beef stew. Dr. Nash would be sure to give them all an earful on the subject, no doubt bringing Paul's latest girlfriend, Sam Winchester, into the main suspect pool.

"You're shivering."

Never let it be said that angels aren't observant. "I'm a human popsicle," Dean reminded him. She reached over Sam's seat to grab the feather down sleeping bag neatly folded on the floor of the Impala. A firm grip on her wrist prevented her from taking it. Blue eyes bore down on her in demanding scrutiny.

"Jimmy says the best way for you to warm up is for you to join us in the back seat. He says you are at risk of instantly dying of hypothermia if you do not."

"Jimmy's looking for warmth, all right," Dean replied. "He's toasty enough with your angel microwaves, so hand over the sleeping bag."

Castiel refused. He locked Dean into his gaze with a ferocity that was just a little too intimate even by angel standards. "Perhaps he isn't the only one seeking warmth. From you."

Dean raised a brow, and Castiel followed in kind, the mutual expression of interest diverging into separate reasoning. "I am not lusting after you, if this is what you think," Castiel said, choosing his words carefully. "I will be the first to admit that these...feelings I am having are alien to me. Jimmy has assured me you can help me understand them."

Dean's first thought was to refuse, considering the disaster at the hospital, but she hesitated as the tip of Castiel's wing brushed against her wrist, its otherworldly softness sending a warm ache through her that wasn't exactly unpleasant. Castiel's grip on her wrist morphed into a caress, his thumb brushing gently over her knuckles. His wings flexed slightly at the blush that came unbidden across the back of his neck. Strange, how they seemed to exist outside of his body, and yet were a such an intrinsic part of it. Fascinated, she dared to stroke one long feather, the small touch causing no small reaction in the angel, who shyly pulled away, his shoulders shaking.

Oh hells, yeah, that was so damn *sweet*. Like a damn kitten or a puppy or some such thing, and man, right now Dean really, really liked petting kittens and puppies.

She crept over Sam's seat and into the back of the Impala with Castiel, his lips locking onto hers in a needy tenderness that had only the slightest remnant of Jimmy within them.

"We've had a discussion," Castiel said to her, answering her unspoken question. "I believe part of my issue back at the hospital was, unfortunately, a measure of sin on my part." He was genuinely shamed at this, and he hung his head, a red blush creeping over his cheeks. He was so dejected and worn and tired. Poor sick angel. Dean had to fight the urge to hug him. "When you refused to--explore certain aspects of my being..." He gestured to his wings with a fleeting, embarrassed wave. "Yet you were so forthright with Jimmy. I regret to tell you this, Dean." He held up his head, eyes burrowing into hers with the weight of a confession that he clearly felt was damning him forever. "I was overcome with the sin of envy."

If Cas thought this was going to stick wrong in Dean's craw, he'd read her all wrong. "You were jealous?" Dean asked, and she couldn't help the thrilled grin this information gave her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her hips swung smoothly onto his lap. "That's so--I don't know. Cute."

Castiel was not so amused. "Envy is a mortal sin," he reminded her.

"It's also aw shucks flattering," Dean said, still grinning. She moved her hands from his shoulders and slid her palms down the length of his wings, their silk gossamer softness making her want to bury herself in them. The reaction out of Castiel was priceless. Hell, even Jimmy was playing along.

"He is so hot for you right now," Jimmy said to her, Castiel too lost in his own pleasures to know his subletter had decided to join in. He bit at Dean's ear, the sensuality of it burning her. "Man, do I ever know how he feels."

Now, back at the hospital, Dean had to admit that had been pretty amazing. Even without a whole heck of a lot of experience, Jimmy had been a real good study and sure knew where to put his hands. Still, this was something way beyond any airbrushed porno, this was Herself, in the back of her Impala, with one hell of a hot duality letting her know, in no uncertain terms, just how awesome it was to playfully co-operate.

A flickering thought crossed her mind that it was this car, in this very back seat, where Dean Winchester demon hunter extraordinaire had first lost his virginity at the tender age of sixteen. A lot of women had been in this back seat since then, but nothing, absolutely nothing, had ever been as mindblowingly awesome as that hot June night with Mandy Turner and her taut, pink lips and equally tight, hot pink cheerleader's outfit.

Only seemed fitting that history repeat itself.

Of course, she didn't have on a hot pink cheerleading outfit. Which, surprisingly, made her gasp more than just a little at the thought.

"Oh man, you are so right, you totally have to buy one," Jimmy breathed harsh into her ear.

"Lacey pink underwear?" Castiel offered.

"Cas, my friend, that would be EPIC."

"It was Dean's idea. I caught it when it slipped out of his subconscious."

"His?"

Dean silenced both of them with a tongue searing kiss, her hands deftly working the buttons on Castiel's shirt, while Jimmy got busy on sliding her jeans off of her hips. The feather down sleeping bag was tugged close around them, a sheen of sweat already worked up between the intimacy of skin on skin. Castiel's wings enveloped her, her face buried in their silken softness, the angel's heat steaming the inside of the Impala. It was getting hotter than hell in here. Only it was a damn sight more heavenly.

///

The inside of the precinct was as non-descript as its exterior, a stark honesty in construction that irritated Sam. With its tiny, four walls, two desks and one corner sectioned off into a large plexi-glass enclosure meant to be a holding cell, there was little that could be hidden here. Paul's stubbornly neat home was transferred with ease to his work, so much so that the two had blended effortlessly, with one aspect of himself bleeding so much into the other the two worlds were clearly indistinguishable. Sam made her way to Paul's desk, a simple black Ikea model with a stainless steel surface, the silver gleaning with polished cleanliness.

She tugged down the sleeves of Paul's sweater, hiding her fingertips beneath the folds of knitted acrylic. No need to leave any traceable fingerprints. She boldly turned on the small lamp over his desk, pulling the grey darkness of the precinct into blue edged hues. There was little to go on other than instinct, and she had to wonder if the drawers in Paul's desk had the same disarray as in his home. She tried one of them, but it was stuck and not by a lock. Frowning, she grabbed a pen out of the black plastic holder on his desk and jiggled it against the crumpled obstruction that had so perfectly wedged the drawer shut. She heard a distinctive crack as the wooden slat it slid on broke, the drawer falling free and onto the floor, its burgeoning contents spilling from it like organs from a gutted living thing.

Her breath was visible in the cold office, but Sam could feel a thin sheen of sweat on her brow, an uneasy oppressive feeling weighing her down as she picked up the pieces that had fallen from the drawer. Paul had been busy here, that much was obvious, but it was not with police work. She began categorizing them onto the surface of the desk, trying to decipher what the strange collection of facts he'd gathered could mean. Newspaper clippings. Maps. Bits of paper with mathematical scribbling. Pages from National Geographic magazines. Biology illustrations nearly covered in blue ink notes, the neat, precise writing obviously Paul's. Circled letters from pages out of books, entire passages from a textbook on mediaeval history highlighted in yellow. The pattern was schizophrenic, disordered. So very different from the personality Sam had felt she'd figured out so well.

She turned her attention on the file cabinet in the corner of his cubicle, the drawers here presenting a much different picture than the chaos at his desk. Here, all the folders were neatly arranged, colour coded and alphabetical. Several had the same red stamped Case Closed trademark as Bridgette Furlough's file, and it was on these that Sam placed her full focus.

One file was particularly dog-eared, and Sam opened it carefully, the yellowed pages within it predating Bridgette Furlough by ten years. It was much neater than Bridgette's file, no doubt due to the amount of time that had passed, the ensuing years making it easy to obsess and categorize every minute detail of the case. A smiling, white haired cop stared back at Sam from a crisp black and white photograph. Detective Ellis Nash, the note on the back read.

Ellis Nash. Father of Nigel Nash. Paul Nash's grandfather.

The circumstances of his death were obvious enough to Sam, and the coroner had agreed, listing it as 'suspicious'. Apparently dead without a mark on him, and his autopsy proved his heart was in perfect health. He was all of thirty-six years old, the picture of a strapping officer ready to make a difference in righting wrong, of which there was painfully little in the tiny town of Esther, Alberta. Sam studied the coroner's report, her breath halting when she came to the description of Ellis Nash's lungs.

"Like grains of sand," the coroner had written, the strokes of his letters halting, making his scrawl hard to read. "..nothing left of the lung tissue at all. Only two small mounds of sand. Course, gritty. Seem magnetized."

"I never did it on purpose. It was an accident."

Sam raised her head and shone the light on the intruder. He held up his hand, blocking it and bringing himself into her full focus.

The Trickster demon.

What the hell was he doing here?

"Ellis Nash was a mistake," the Trickster said, shaking his head in what looked to any outside observer as real remorse. Sam, however, knew better. Her hand wrapped tight around the hilt of the demon blade still tucked into the back of Paul's ill-fitting jeans.

The Trickster was in the mood to be talkative, as usual, and Sam fought the urge to kill him. Again. In the world of demons, this guy was a damned cockroach. "I was teaching a lustful preacher a lesson," the Trickster said, happily reminiscing. "They were my favourite, the lustful preachers, going on about God and Good and living high and mighty off the hard earned cash of their gullible parishioners. I mean, damn, I could just *taste* the hypocrisy and it was so delish. I still get a hankering for a piece of that to this day." The Trickster sighed, sadly, his mood further depressed by the demon knife now held firm in Sam's outstretched hand. "But poor Ellis Nash. I wish you'd had that thing back then. I still feel so bad about that I could let you sink that knife in my unbeating heart right now."

"Come closer, and I'll grant you your wish," Sam sneered.

The Trickster inched closer, but was careful to avoid Sam as he gently picked up the file on the fallen officer. "Like I said, a lustful preacher. His name was Brother Jacob, at least that's what he went by. Ellis Nash had figured out his real name was Harvey Wallace Slokum and he was wanted for con jobs all across Nevada and a murder charge in Vegas. But I was getting greedy back then, and I was following this guy's work. He had a thing for the young daughters of the most wealthy parishioners." He licked his lips as though the very thought made him hungry. "You should have heard Brother Jacob at the pulpit. He almost had *me* believing in miracles."

He pulled up a chair and sat, motioning for Sam to do the same behind Paul's desk. Sam refused and remained standing, lest this talkative bastard get any ideas or start working his usual reality bending magic on her. So far, the world remained unwaveringly linear.

"I don't care about your life story," Sam snapped at him.

The Trickster was offended. "This isn't *my* life story, girlie. This is your boyfriend's. Isn't that the whole reason you're in here, snooping about in his business? Tsk, and here I thought yours was a trusting relationship." He leaned forward, his hooded eyes locking on Sam's in earnest seriousness. "I wasn't even going to come here. I honestly didn't know I could. When I saw you managed to get that angel into town along with your reconstituted sister-slash-brother, I figured it was worth the risk of opening up some old wounds."

"What are you talking about?" Sam asked.

"When I gave that preacher his dust to dust ultimatum, Detective Ellis Nash was already hot on that bastard's trail. I'd already played with our hypocritical God-son Brother Jacob, and I'm in the middle of giving him some Divine Justice, when who walks smack dab in the centre stealing more than his fair share of the Holy Glory? Ellis Nash, that's who. A wholly decent, innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time. A real God-fearing man. A real theo-philosopher, as it turned out."

The Trickster crossed his arms, clearly uncomfortable.

"Now, normally, I don't give a rat's hooey who gets caught in my crossfire. I have my reasons for taking out who I do, not to mention considerable creative license. But Ellis Nash ruined preachers for me for good. How the hell else do you think televangelists came into being? Because I couldn't stand the thought of culling the chaff, that's why. Brought back all those nasty memories."

He tossed the file back on the desk, and Sam went over it, the image of a smiling Ellis Nash suddenly taking on a more sinister expression. "What does any of this have to do with his grandson?" Sam asked.

"You know, old Mr. Nash must have been one hell of a big thinker," the Trickster continued, ignoring Sam's question. "Ninety-nine percent of all humans are moronic digestive machines, just taking things in and pushing them out. But then, once in a while, you get that one percent, and it kind of throws you." He steepled his fingers and pressed them hard against his chin. "I don't know how to explain other than to say that Something, I couldn't tell you what, stood up and took notice when a grave injustice was done to Ellis Nash. There were serious consequences. So serious, even I couldn't foresee just how far into the future they were going to spread."

"Consequences," Sam said. A memory of Paul at the cougar bar assailed her. His bland, almost passive understanding of how one action reverberated long into others.

The Trickster was sombre, steepled fingers now pressed against the underside of his chin, a gun made of flesh and bone. "Esther is a special place, Sam, because of what happened to Detective Ellis Nash in February of 1965. They built the precinct here in 1971, and dedicated it to him. You'd have seen that if you'd read the plaque near the front door. This place is a dead zone. Nothing happens here that wouldn't happen on Earth." With a sudden movement, he leapt from his chair, and sliced at his own arm with the demon blade Sam held aloft. It left an ugly gash on the Trickster's arm.

Ugly. Deep.

Red.

"Nothing supernatural lives in Esther," he explained. "In this town, I'm as flesh and blood as any living thing on this Earth."

Sam watched the red droplets of blood seep from the Trickster's arm with a cold fascination. She glanced at the various pieces of the former Ellis Nash's file, blue ink lining the margins of the newspaper clippings, circled letters in his obituary. Even the coroner's report was riddled with Paul's strange graffiti, the back of the page containing a spiral of strange symbols and letters and mathematical shreds that made absolutely no sense.

She held her breath when she found it. There, on the bottom, on the front of the page just beneath the coroner's signature. Three words, written in neat, precise, blue ink.

Three distinctive names.

"He's been looking for me for a long time," the Trickster admitted. He gave Sam a sneering smile. "But, thanks to you, I'm able to give him the slip."

"What happens if I read this aloud?" Sam countered, eyes narrowed. "You'll just turn to a pile of salt and everything goes back to what it was."

"Nothing is ever that simple, you of all people should understand that," the Trickster replied. He leaned close to Sam, his red blood dripping onto the cold steel surface of the desk. "I repeat, nothing supernatural can happen here, not in this precinct, and it's seriously compromised in the town of Esther. Every second I spend here, I lose a chunk of power. I'm not sticking around to become a rotting meatsuit that's been used well past its expiry date. Besides," he held out his hands in apology. "Killing me changes nothing. Paul Nash isn't about to stop just because I'm gone. It's why we need you, Sammy-boy. Heaven and Hell both depend on it."

"Do you have to be so fucking cryptic?" Sam shouted at him. Her voice felt hoarse. Oddly deep. She touched her neck and was shocked to discover the spontaneous growth of an Adam's apple. "The hell...?"

"You're a real good distraction," the Trickster said, revelling in Sam's surprised shock. "You just remember what side you're on, and you'll do us all proud."

"And what side would that be?" Sam shouted.

The Trickster stood in front of him, nose to nose, making it easy to either kill him with simple murder or utter his name and watch him disintegrate into tiny white crystals. Sam did neither.

"Much as you might hate to know this, there's a balance to things," the Trickster said. He wiped at his chin with the back of his arm, smearing his neck with his own blood. "You've got demon blood in you. Your brother was rebuilt from the dead. That angel of yours isn't as fallen as you think. Paul Nash is all about being human, and none of you can even come close to that again." His eyes narrowed, burning black as they reflected Sam's nervous expression within them. "Keep up the good work, Sam. With Paul Nash so focused on you, this triangular world of ours has a nice, healthy, low sodium diet."


	16. Chapter 16

a lingering fringe--chapter sixteen

Dean was riding on the last wave of an incredibly good feeling, one that was slowly subsiding into a delicious afterglow. She rested her arm behind her head, Castiel--or was it Jimmy?--gazing down at her in sappy romantic wonder. A deeply male facet of her scoffed at this, but another feeling was hovering near the surface, one that most definitely liked the rapt attention she was receiving. "I don't know about you, but that was totally awesome. If it took the apocalypse to make this happen, then yeah, God's got the coolest plan ever."

Castiel faltered slightly at this, his expression one of vague discomfort. "Why would you bring my Father into this conversation? I truly doubt He had anything to do with us doing...What we just did."

"Why not?" Dean flippantly replied. "After all, He sees All, doesn't He?"

"Right," Castiel said, his body tense as he remained braced above Dean. His wings were pressed tight against his back, as though embarrassed. "I probably should have thought that through."

"What's the big deal? He's an omnipotent entity," Dean said.

"Yes, but imagine your own feelings when thinking of *your* father taking a peek on what you were doing not ten minutes ago."

"Oh...Yeah," Dean said, making a face.

"So you now understand my predicament?"

"You got a point."

Still, she couldn't help but tempt fate, her touch instinctively moving to Castiel's wings, teasing them slightly open as he relaxed into the erotic sensations that petting celestial feathers afforded. She grabbed it suddenly, forcing the wing open by its bent central bone, pulling it closer around her nude body, the heat of his ashen coloured feathers bathing her in comfort. Her lips teased the base of their construction, issuing a satisfying moan from her partner.

"Angel sex is the bomb," Jimmy breathlessly agreed.

"Get lost, Jimmy," Castiel said through gritted teeth.

Lost. Oh yeah, that was definitely the feeling Dean was cultivating right now, buried deep in soft feathers that felt like warm silk on her skin, the Impala forgotten, the Apocalypse forgotten, even Sam, all of it melting into one fantastic moment that was set to send her reeling.

Castiel was experiencing similar sentiments. "I've always found you beautiful," he whispered into the crook of her neck, and she arched it, allowing his hot mouth to travel down its length. "Ever since I've met you."

She smiled at this, knowing how often she'd used that line in the past. A small, uncomfortable point tried to nag at her, and it was difficult to focus on it with the way Castiel was such a quick learner, her body starting that now familiar rise of adrenaline that shuddered all sorts of pleasant waves throughout her being. Since he'd known her. Since he'd...

"What?"

Her hands were clasped tight on Castiel's shoulders, the face looking down at her slightly confused, and not as angelic as before. Jimmy. He'd caught on, too.

"There's something wrong here," he said.

"I'd say," Dean said, her voice a snarl. "What the hell, Cas--Since you've *known* me? I don't know if you've noticed, but I was *male* when you first showed up. Are you saying you've been beating those angel wings of yours in secret, thinking about me while you do it?"

"Now you know how I feel," Jimmy replied.

"For God's sake, Jimmy, I'm trying to get to the bottom of something here, do you mind?"

"I really wish you would stop bringing up my Father during these moments. You don't see me shouting out 'John Winchester' in a fit of feral passion."

She wanted to give him a biting retort, but there was something about her voice that seriously amiss. The cadence felt wrong, as did the distribution of weight as she lay beneath Castiel, her body feeling far more tense and muscular than it had not a few moments before. Castiel's angelic embrace was now replaced with Jimmy's wide-eyed shock, which was quickly morphing into a full blown panic attack.

"Dude," Jimmy said.

Dean got the hint right away. She felt flat. A point emphasized by Castiel's hot little hand. No soft mounds of double D happiness here. It took a few seconds for enough air to get into his lungs, but the blood curdling scream Dean managed to emit shook the inner acoustics of the Impala with opera precision.

He roughly shoved Castiel off of him, and grabbed his jeans, putting them on as he leapt over the gear shift and into the driver's seat. To an outside observer, the interior of the Impala was a confusing riot of commotion, with misty windows splattered into clarity by large, frantically flapping wings, as though a massive mutant raven had been shoved into the car, with Dean Winchester doing his best to beat it into submission.

His fantastic night now irreparably soured, it was no surprise to Dean that Sam now picked this opportunity to return, considerably more brotherly than when he'd left. He pulled open the passenger side door as Castiel furiously composed himself, the buttons of his shirt done up wrong, his tie markedly askew. Dean fixed the angel with a glare that he hoped conveyed the unspoken rule that nothing that went on here was to be told to Sam. He needn't have worried. Castiel could barely breathe, let alone spill more uncomfortable secrets.

Sam, with his Calvin Klein simplicity, appeared as perfect and in control as he had when he'd first walked into the precinct, his mind occupied with theory rather than physical facts. Dean wasn't sure why, but this irritated him. Sam couldn't see the simplicity in anything. Black and white were only different shades of grey.

"I don't know what happened," Sam said, his voice deepening in panic. "I didn't do this on purpose, I didn't flex that muscle. Honest to God, Dean, I was just poking through files and getting some information and then...Poof!"

"Poof," Dean evenly repeated.

"I ran into the Trickster," Sam added, breathless. Dean bristled at this, his hands firm on the steering wheel of the Impala. Figures. Of *course* that bastard would have something to do with this. He rubbed at his jaw, the grey outline of the precinct in front of them a dull point of focus.

"So, he's the reason for all of this," Dean said, confident he understood.

"No. Yes. It's complicated," Sam said, frowning. "Something happened between him and Paul's grandfather a long time ago, a police officer named Ellis Nash. He's caught up in the randomness of it himself. Trust me, Dean, he has no power here, especially not at the precinct. He slashed his own arm with the demon knife, and all it did was give him a cut that'll need stitches. This town is like it's 'uncursed'. It's like the place sucks out everything that has even the hint of the supernatural attached, and the precinct is obviously the epicentre. It's the Chernobyl of the unexplained." Sam's breaths were coming hard and fast, his body shivering beneath the thin wool of Paul's black sweater. "Why is the car full of feathers?"

"So this has nothing to do with any kind of, I don't know, subconscious issue that hasn't been properly dealt with?" He glanced at Castiel's rumpled and exhausted figure in the rear view mirror. "It's just spontaneous?"

"What the hell do you think, Dean? I mean come on--Dude don't look like a lady!"

"Just checking," Dean muttered.

"Paul's desk is full of these weird notes," Sam said, losing patience with his brother. "All these random bits and pieces of information, none of them making any coherent sense." He shook his head, his unspoken fear making Dean take notice. "The Trickster said I had to remember what side I was on. I'm not liking this, not with the implications he suggested. I'm not going darkside again, Dean, if that's what you're thinking. He had a bigger picture in mind than just simple demon influence. I don't know why we fell into this rabbit hole, but we need to crawl our way out of it."

"And just what is your master plan, little brother?" Dean asked. He couldn't keep the ice from his voice, especially with his damned angel sitting in the back seat giving him That Look every now and then, with Jimmy throwing him a What The Fuck? response. "Head out to the outskirts of this town and meet up with Meg and her happy campers? Not on my watch, we're not." He sighed, thumb tapping thoughtfully at his chin as he contemplated what they knew. Paul Nash was a weird guy. Check. Cop, but he doesn't have much to do here, so he spends his time between Esther and Las Vegas hunting down an encyclopaedia of unrelated info. Check. Meets Sam, screws her brainless and leaves behind the Nevada desert for a screwfest in the tundra. Check. Nothing supernatural works properly in the town of Esther. Even the Trickster is affected, which means this place has some serious mojo problems, of the kind that angels themselves can't cure. Check. Cas thought Dean had a pretty face from the first time he'd met him and has probably wanted to jump his mortal bones since the guy flew into town and plucked him out of Hades. Pause. Rewind that thought. Delete.

"I say we head back for the border," Sam said, thankfully breaking the thought loop that took Dean momentarily hostage. He took a worn piece of paper out of his side pocket, handing it to Dean. Its edges were curled and well worn, thumbed into suede. Three words were neatly printed on the yellowed surface. "This will get us past them," Sam assured him.

"What is this, Sam?"

Sam chewed his bottom lip, giving Castiel a narrow view in the mirror before continuing. "It's a name," he said.

"It's three names," Dean said.

"No, Dean. It's one name." Sam took a deep intake of breath, cleansing his fear. "The Trickster's."

Behind them, Castiel tensed in the back seat, his appearance suddenly far less harmless and rumpled. "Give it to me," he demanded, his hand held out.

"I don't think so," Sam said, angrily snatching the paper back. He turned on Castiel, unhappy with the angel's sudden stubborn resolve. "You might be Dean's new best friend, but I'm not giving you any leverage until we know exactly what's going on. The Trickster wasn't just implying my demon blood as being part of this, but the supernatural as a whole. Last I looked, celestial beings had a whole lot of the unexplained attached to them. That makes you part of this supernatural bargain, too." He opened the passenger door, allowing in a sudden whip of cold air, snow carried along it, blanketing everything within three feet in a thick wall of grey and white. "With this name, we can blackmail the Trickster into getting us as far away from Esther as possible. If that doesn't work out, there's always plan 'B'."

"Which is?" Dean cautiously asked.

"We ammo up and we get the hell out of here, blasting a path through that demon army. If Paul's turning everything supernatural to salt, then so be it. I'm not sticking around for that psycho to do the same to us."

"I guess he's not your boyfriend any more, huh?" Dean said, the hurt look on his brother's face instantly making him regret the quip. "It's no big deal, Sammy. Just consider it a learning curve. You said it yourself, the guy's no demon, and damn if he doesn't have a good set of skills. Don't feel bad about it, I would have boned him, too."

"I don't need your stupid reassurance," Sam coldly replied. He stepped out into the cold, the passenger door slammed shut with considerable force behind him. Dean sat rigid in the driver's seat, a full on tsunami of emotions digging into him at all angles, leaving nothing but anger in its wake. Leave it to Sam to pick the fucking Monster, Dean thought, and instantly chided himself because the observation was short-sighted and cruel. Castiel remained the proverbial fifth wheel, his silence irritating in its judgement. Dean could feel a familiar heat rising at the back of his neck at the thought of what they were up while Sam had his tete a tete with the Trickster. Part of him was tempted to morph back into his female self and give Mr. Brooding Sanctimonious a few things to think about other than how this all related to his quest against the apocalypse, but Dean wasn't sure an angel of the Lord could suffer a case of blue balls.

"Dean...What we did..."

"Never mind," Dean quickly said.

"I just wanted to say..."

"Don't."

"It was...You know as well as I that it was..."

"Destined to be repeated. Often." Jimmy gave Dean a wide grin and raised his brow suggestively. Castiel, sitting beside him, gave him a painful pinch on the arm.

"Ow! What the hell?"

"That's where you're going if you don't stop with the lustful neediness."

"I'm not needy, pal. You're the one with the ruffled feathers." Jimmy turned on Dean, his palms held outward, apologetic. "Hey, no offence my friend, because you are hot and all--When you are a *girl*. I want to emphasize that in case you get the wrong idea."

'I'm not the one with any of those," Dean said, casting Castiel a withering glare.

"I don't understand how you can run so hot and cold at the same time," Castiel replied, genuinely confused. "In my estimation, everything was going fine and then you let out this horrible scream, like you'd just been tossed back into hellfire. That reaction was unnecessary, and very disturbing."

"You know what's really disturbing? Angels who don't care about the fact that there are guy parts involved when they themselves are roaming the earth with borrowed guy parts whose original owner doesn't like mucking about with other's guy's parts. And Dean Winchester, the guy, he doesn't like even thinking about other guy's parts. The only guy parts he's really concerned with are his own. Any other guy, they can keep their parts to themselves. If they want to party with their parts, that's their business, but I'm not having any part of it."

"I have no understanding of what you just said." Castiel cast Dean a withering look of disdain. "I've already explained why human gender is confusing for me. It was your soul I found attractive, Dean. Your corporeal existence means nothing to me, the conceptual make up of you, your soul, it shines with such passionate intensity." Castiel couldn't help but dreamily sigh, an echo of Jimmy's original lust. "Resisting you is difficult."

"Yeah, well, my spiritual self was fully attached to a metaphorical penis, just so we're clear." The tension in the car was well beyond nuclear at this point, and it was all Dean had in him to keep his emotions at bay. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do in this odd situation; give the guy a good right hook to get the ogling to back off, or slip into something soft, comfortable and yielding so she could go for that three hit home run Sam was talking about back at the demon motel. Feeling a sudden hint of pity for the object of her ire, Dean slid into female form, her pose unconsciously seductive as she leaned over the back of the driver's seat, her chin tucked at an uncomfortable angle on her soft, round shoulder. "We'll figure this out when we're out of here," she promised. She tried to make out her brother through the windshield, the glass thick with a layer of slushy snow. She dared to pull on Castiel's tie, her eyes heavy with the sleepy assurance of sex. "When Sam's not around."

Too soon, she was about to get her wish. With a resounding smash that sent her body morphing in panic back to male mode, Dean watched as the rear windshield shattered on impact. Sam, bloodied and blindsided, tried to fight back, his groaning body pulled out of the injured Impala, and into the burgeoning winter storm.


	17. Chapter 17

a lingering fringe--chapter seventeen

"I know what you are, you goddamned bastard!"

Sam sputtered, his mouth filled with blood, his throat choking on the iron thickness that slid down in a fleshy pulp in his chest. The violence that had sent him through the rear window of the Impala should have left him unconscious, but the fiercely cold temperature outside roused him enough to get a few punches of his own in. He swung wildly a third time, managing to get up off the car, but was knocked off his feet with a good kick to his ankles. He landed on his back with a dull thud, pain shooting up his shoulders as he landed on his arm. He was momentarily stunned, the winter storm quickly sailing down upon him like nuclear fallout. His assailant came into view, then, a halo of snow framing him in a chaotic pattern of might.

"This is for Sam," he said, and laid in a brutal punch right across Sam's jaw. Sam spit out a chunk of blood onto the slushy pavement at his cheek, the small action long enough for Paul to pound at him again. Fists, kicks and fury. Sam might have demon blood still streaming within him, but with the element of surprise Paul had the advantage, and he was using it to go in for the kill.

"Paul," Sam managed to say. He tried to get to his feet, only for a dizzying painful realm of stars erupt through his head, preventing him. "Don't," he managed to whisper.

"That's what she said," Paul shouted down at him, a kick at Sam's stomach for good measure, making him double into the foetal position in pain. "You son of a bitch. You goddamned raping son of a..."

Sam had been in plenty of fights before and hell, every demon knew how to pack a wallop where it counted. But Paul Nash's fury was far worse than an order from a demon superior bent on taking out a human interloper. Paul was human, and his fists were strong with a sense of righteous justice. Sam knew what made him feel this way. After all, he was the one who told Paul all about his supposed evil brother, Simon.

Self loathing can be a terrible thing.

He wasn't without his own weapons. The demon blade was still tucked in the back of his jeans. If he could just roll over enough to reach it, he could slash at Paul, and put them on a more even keel in this battle. He could use it as leverage to reason with him.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing!"

"Get the fuck out of here, this has nothing to do with you!" Paul shouted at Dean.

"The hell I will! Sam! Sam, can you hear me? Get off my brother you bald bastard freak!"

Sam was lying on his arm, the stabbing pain in shoulder telling him the bone was broken. Though the torment was unbearable, he managed to twist his fingers around the demon blade and pull it free. Paul punched Dean twice in the face, and shoved him against the Impala, moving quickly to grab Sam by the throat. He pressed tight, the stars returning, the drifting fallout from above spinning and melting into Sam's wide eyes as he struggled against the choking grip. His uninjured arm searched out the ground beneath him, his fingers singing in victory when they found the handle of the demon blade.

Sam brought the blade up and sliced at Paul's arm.

It left a small gash in Paul's leather jacket, white goose down spilling from it harmlessly. He snatched the demon blade from him and tossed it onto the pavement. It landed with a loud clatter, snapping neatly in two.

Sam could feel the last tendrils of consciousness upon him as Paul's hand continued to squeeze hard on his throat. He tore at the man's hand, nails biting into flesh, but Paul wasn't about to budge.

"Stop!"

Paul released Sam's throat, taking in this new opponent who stood beside a doubled over young woman, who was clearly having trouble keeping down her lunch. Castiel pointed two fingers at Paul, and to Sam it looked like the angel was ready for some more than serious smiting. Cas, with the way his eyes were flashing, a series of strange, light grey shadows sparking out behind him in long lines of lightning--This angel was royally pissed.

"Stop or you will regret this," Cas warned Paul.

Paul released his grip on Sam and stepped back. His knuckles were caked thick with Sam's blood, his own mingling with the prone Winchester at his feet as Paul wiped at his chin with the back of his hand. Cas continued to point, two fingers all he needed to be a proper threat, energy flashing around him in shorted out spurts of flame.

"This isn't your fight," Paul said to him.

"You hit my girlfriend," Castiel said, surprising himself with the note the pride creeping into his voice. He gave a glassy eyed glare at Dean that was supposed to convey care, but served more to irritate her. "Since I am charged with her safety, I believe that means I am now involved."

"You and I are on the same page, pal," Paul said. He straddled his legs over Sam's waist, and crouched to face him. "This creep did a number on my girl," he said, his voice gently muted by the thick layers of snow building up around them. The cold air snatched at his words, bathing their fire in a frosted mist. Paul reached for his belt, and before Dean had any room to protest, the gun was in Paul's hand.

He pressed the barrel tight against Sam's forehead.

Paul was outright insane with rage, Sam knew. He swallowed, fear and blood mingling in a sickening miasma in the pit of his stomach. Paul Nash was a smart man, a determined man. He held his passions close to him, keeping them secreted inside of his heart, smothering them with his own perceptions. Sam closed his eyes. There was no choice. This was going to end in his murder.

"You can't!" Dean shouted, and the gun was pressed deeper, leaving a red indent on Sam's forehead. Cas's smiting fingers were broken by this stand-off. A horrific game of quick draw was threatening to play itself out. The moment coalesced into who was the fastest on the trigger--A heavenly angel with his supernatural abilities mostly erased, or a practised cop who had the solidity of a bullet in his favour.

His throat was aching. The choke hold damaged his windpipe. Sam fought to swallow, broken bones piercing his body with pain. Battered as he was, this he could cope with, this physical sensation of horror upon him. But the pain of Paul crouching over him, a bullet at the ready to burrow into Sam's brain, that was a different, and far more difficult torment to suffer through. Though a huge part of Sam felt a reign of guilt insist that Paul go through with it, that he just die like he was supposed to ages ago and set the world right again, he couldn't let it happen. The guilt was a poison that would only transfer itself to someone else. To Dean. To Castiel. To Paul, who thought himself her champion and would discover he was her brutal killer. The guilt would be all that would win.

With the cold barrel of the gun pressed hard against her skin, Sam mustered all the strength he possessed and, regardless of the shocking pain it sent throughout his body, he flexed that hidden muscle and brought the context of his injuries into a far more familiar, female shape.

The barrel of the gun wavered. The hand that held the revolver shook.

"Sam?" Paul said, disbelieving his own voice. The gun shook wildly in his grip, until it finally slipped out of his hand to fall softly in the surrounding, blood stained snow. "No, you were her brother. I was taking out her bastard brother." Paul's horror began to finally find its home, creeping out of him in gutted, terminal understanding. "Sam? Oh God, did I do this to you? Oh God, Sam. Sam!"

Sam coughed, a large clump of blood spilling out of her mouth and onto the slushy ice piled around her. "She needs to get to a hospital. Oh shit. She's so bashed up. I beat the shit out of her. Oh shit."

He cradled her into his arms and wept openly into her neck. Remorse was a painful thing, Sam thought, every bone in her body bruised and angry at his sorrowful embrace. He kissed her, deeply, staining his face thick with her blood. "I'm so sorry," he wailed into her blood matted hair. "Baby, why didn't you tell me? I should have known." Paul Nash choked on a sob. "All these years, looking for clues and it's all my fault. I should have figured it out. Baby, I'm so sorry." He rocked back and forth, Sam's broken body at the mercy of his contrition. "So sorry."

///

Things weren't much better when she regained consciousness. Dean and Castiel stood at her bedside, Dean thankfully wearing brother skin, while Castiel's pallor was increasing by the minute. "Good, you're awake," Dean said to the slight flutter of Sam's eyes as she fought to regain consciousness. "Look, we got to get out of here. This place is starting to affect Cas again, and last I looked, Esther didn't have any Sick Angel Clinics open this time of night."

Pain wound its way through Sam's skull, her hand brought up to her forehead, an IV pulled taut at the simple action. All she could remember with any real clarity was leaving the Impala to head for the trunk and its arsenal. She had to make sure they had plenty of ammunition for when they skipped town because they couldn't rely on the Trickster's help, blackmailed as it would be with the possession of his full name in the back pocket of Sam's jeans. She remembered popping the trunk, and then a sudden splash of broken glass, a whirlwind of suffering, a torture that didn't end until she was staring down the long, dark tunnel of her mortality fashioned from the barrel of a gun.

"Hospital," she said, as though unsure what the word actually meant.

"Yeah, no thanks to your psycho boyfriend," Dean tersely replied. "The jackass was ready to kill you. Actually, no. He's was ready to kill *Simon*." Dean's anger was palpable, and Sam tried to focus on her brother, the steady drip of painkillers from the IV making it difficult. Dean sat in a chair at her bedside, and Castiel was woozy and pale as he leaned against the far wall, his breathing suffering long bouts of apnoea that coloured his sallow skin into shades of grey. "He's got barely any strength left," Dean said, worry edging his voice. "I think the whole thing was too emotional for him and he short-circuited on panic."

Sam closed her eyes and swallowed with effort. Her throat felt raw, the tendons within it bruised. "Where's Paul?" she managed to whisper.

Dean was silent a long moment. He looked to Castiel, who offered nothing in return for encouragement. "He brought you to the hospital," Dean said. "We followed behind him. The official report is that you got the crap beat out of you by your brother, Simon." Dean clasped his sister's hand, squeezing it in pitying reassurance. "He's royally freaked out, which is understandable. He feels real bad about it, Sam."

"Attempted murder usually plagues one's sense of remorse," Castiel weakly added.

"He thought he was protecting his girlfriend from a force of evil, Cas. All he knew was that Simon was this bastard who brutalized her, and who made her life a living hell." Dean sighed, and released his grip on Sam's hand, placing his palm lightly over it instead. "I know you told me what you said to him, Sam, but I guess Paul's just better at reading between the lines than I ever was."

There was a gentle knock on the door, and Paul cautiously entered the room. He closed and locked the door behind him, the screen giving a view of the hallway neatly shut. They were now enclosed in suffocating privacy, and Sam twitched uncomfortably where she lay, the pillow itching the back of her neck. Paul braced his hands on his hips, ice blue eyes concentrating on the stone pattern of the linoleum flooring at his feet. Dean and Castiel remained tense, unwilling observers to a dispute that was clearly none of their business.

"Why didn't you tell me, Sam?"

Sam braced her fingertips on her sore forehead, the IV needle pulling with a dull ache on the back of her hand. "You don't just go around telling someone you're a monster," Sam said. A swollen purple, bloodshot eye regarded Paul with contempt. "You should have turned me into a pillar of salt when you had the chance."

"It doesn't work like that," Paul nervously replied. He bit his bottom lip anxiously, sighing helplessly over the confrontation. "If you knew about what I did in Vegas, why would you hide yourself from me? It's not like I haven't dealt with worse surprises than that freak waitress. I had no reason to attack you, Sam. I can't just pick and choose. I don't pick the information that's given to me. It's all random."

"Those notes," Dean said, reflective. "So what's it all about, then? If it's all so random, how do you get the results you do, because I have to say buddy, being able to turn a demon into a pillar of salt by doing nothing but saying a name is damned impressive. Just what the hell kind of hunter are you, because I've never heard of the like of you before."

"Hunter?"

"Yeah, you heard me. Hunters. Like me and my brother--well, sister, here. We live on the road. Hunting down demons. Killing things. That's what we do." Dean remained tensed, his shoulders hunched as he glanced at Castiel, keeping him well out of the loop of the Winchester clan camaraderie. "This whole chick flick thing going on, we've been told it's a side effect. If you go poking at the Unexplained too often it'll start biting back. Like getting cancer if you're exposed to agent orange during battle. We're fighting a war, pal, and our enemies are everywhere. You can't blame us for being cautious. We just needed to figure out what side you're on."

"Angels and devils," Paul said, shaking his head as though the very thought were foolish. He fixed his ice blue gaze on Dean, crystallizing his resolve into cold facts. "I don't care about Heaven or Hell," he admitted. His stance on the matter was rigid. Unyielding. Dean shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and even the sickly Castiel was on edge, his weak body pressed tight against the wall that was holding him up. When Paul spoke, it was for Sam alone. "Fuck angels, and fuck devils," he said, his words echoing in the dark confines of the room. "They have no sway over miracles, there's no magic in either of them. We are surrounded by miracles every day, and we're all just too busy looking for some supernatural explanation, or miraculous sign instead of seeing what's sitting right in front of our eyes." He leaned towards Sam, a light kiss offered to her forehead, on the small red half moon from where he'd pressed the barrel of his gun against it earlier that evening. "Human ingenuity *is* the miracle. Television. Cancer treatments. We discovered these things. Humanity, not angels or demons or spooks. And do you know why we discovered them, all on our own like we did?"

Sam frowned. She swallowed, her mouth dry, her face sore and bruised.

"Because Heaven and Hell are obsolete, Sam. Invention, discovery, the whole spectrum of science. Don't you get it? That's what we need to listen to. It's the language of God Himself."

"Nonsense," Castiel weakly muttered. Paul cast him a fierce glare, icy eyes filling the air between them with frostbitten malice.

"If you pay attention. If you are careful and look at the tiniest details, no matter how unrelated they originally seem to be, you're going to find answers that you didn't know were hiding there. It takes a lot of work and a hell of a lot of focus, and I've spent my whole life, starting with what happened to my grandfather, beginning backwards as I'm figuring out the threads that tie these pieces together, until finally, I'm left with tangible information, with a place, with a name, with three distinct names." The intensity of his speech was beginning to inspire fear in Dean, who instinctively clasped his sister's hand as Paul moved closer, those freaky ice eyes of his piercing the gloom of the room. He was like a skewed evangelist, Dean thought. A real Brief History of Time thumper. "Heaven and Hell are the defunct models. It's Earth that's the newest lab for God's work. That's why Esther exists, here in the middle of a godforsaken landscape that no normal human being would want to suffer through, let alone be born in. Here, in Esther, I have managed to piece the tiniest details together. What I have at my desk, spending countless hours on back at the precinct--These are the patterns I've figured out." He pulled back, satisfied with his explanation. "They're the lingering fringe that is the consciousness of God."

Dean remained tense at Sam's side.

"So what?" Dean said.

Paul blinked at this, not understanding.

"So you got on the God bandwidth, so what?" Dean repeated. "Science is next to godliness, it's all in the details, whatever. Why bother following these crazy clues in the first place if all we are is just a big lab rat experiment to the Big Guy?"

"We're far more than that," Paul insisted.

"Oh yeah? Says you."

"With every name, I'm coming closer."

"Closer to what? World peace? A cure for cancer? Seems to me you're wasting your time talking to us, you should be out there, clipping out more newspaper articles and highlighting physics equations, none of which seems to be doing more than taking out the occasional demon."

"With every success," Paul steadfastly continued, his fist pumping in emphasis on the bed rail of Sam's bed. "I am closer to figuring it out."

Dean's frustration was at all time high. "Figure out what?" he exclaimed. "Spit it out, dude! What, what, what!"

"His name," Paul said.

"Whose fucking name?"

"HIS name."

The room was suddenly quiet at this admission. Outside the wind howled, tiny shards of ice pinging against the window. The occupants were still and frozen in the dark space. Castiel stopped breathing. Dean and Sam followed suit.


	18. Chapter 18

a lingering fringe--chapter eighteen

"Blasphemer."

Castiel's eventual breath allowed all of those in the room to quickly replenish their lungs, the moment cleansed with that judging retort.

"I say His name, and Heaven and Hell cease to exist," Paul sternly replied. "Read your bible. God likes to get up close and personal with his favourite creation. It will be only God and humanity. None of the chaff in between."

"The angelic choir is not comprised of 'chaff'," Castiel angrily chided him. "You misunderstand an important facet of this world's continued existence. There are a series of checks and balances at work here, a supernatural effect that cannot be tampered with without grave consequences, ones which could be disastrous for humanity as a whole."

"I doubt that," Paul said. He gave Castiel a narrowed glare. "The thing is, you're already been compromised thanks to what you've been exposed to. The more human you become, the more unnatural those who surround you are. I know who you really are, Castiel. I figured it out a few days after Vegas. As an angel, you're not exactly neutral in this argument." He glanced at Sam and Dean. "As for the two of you, I have a sincere proposal that I hope you'll consider."

"As long as it's not indecent," Dean said, grinning despite himself. He gave his sister's exasperated sigh at this a tired look. "Aw, come on, he walked right into that one!"

"You could stay in Esther. Both of you."

"What?" Dean said, incredulous. "There's no reason for us to stay here. Nothing supernatural happens on this glacier, you said so yourself."

"If you stay, it'll disappear."

"What will?"

"The hold of that old dead wood magic on you. Anything created by the influence of Heaven or Hell will fade away, eventually, leaving nothing but your humanity behind."

Dean cast Sam a tortured glance, one that his sister responded to in kind. How tempting it was, to have this release just handed to them like this, to just cast off their guns and their horrors in order to spend their days in retirement with the cold, blank beauty of Esther and all her meditative charm. Let the apocalypse happen without them. Let God sort it all out. But the concept of that sort of rest for the Winchester clan was an impossibility, one that cut deep against their hunter hearts. While Paul worked out the mechanics of an Almighty name, the world was going to go to Hell. Millions were set to die without the small kinks the Winchesters put in Lucifer's plans along the way.

Behind him, Dean could feel Castiel waiting expectantly for an answer to this challenge, well aware that the angel would be cast adrift, that over time it would be Jimmy who would remain, while Castiel's supernaturally formed self would fade away. Dean couldn't be sure that he himself would be immune, nor Sam. They were both so infected with the influence of angels and demons it was impossible to say if they would remain corporeal, or would likewise make a fade-out into non-existence.

"We can't," Sam managed to whisper.

Paul kissed her softly on the lips, his burly body tense with unspoken emotion.

"I know," he said.

///

The border of Esther was already a mile behind them. Paul had followed them in his truck, the terror he inspired in Meg's demon army keeping a healthy radius within which they could escape. He remained a stoic black line on the border of the town, still visible in the side-mirror that Sam kept riveted in his sight, until finally the drifts of snow that collected and drifted across the highway obscured any hint that he, or the town of Esther, remained.

Dean glanced at his brother, Sam's forehead bruised and his left eye angrily swollen. After a tearful good-bye, Sam had slipped into his male form, and remained stubbornly silent and brooding ever since. Dean understood. It was just easier to hold it in when you didn't have that extra attraction getting in the way.

Hormones. Fuck 'em.

"I guess that was one for the books. Chuck ought to get a bestseller out of this one. What do you think, Sam? Up for showing up on Oprah selling the movie rights to the love story that never should have been told?"

"I don't want to talk about it right now, Dean," Sam said. He sank lower in his seat, his bruised forehead pressed against the cold passenger window, eyes glassy with emotion.

Castiel was in the back seat, snoring loudly. Both he and Jimmy were clearly enjoying a mutual siesta as the angel garnered back his sapped strength. Dean cast the two-in-one special a quick glance in his rear view mirror before turning back to his brother. "You know, he's not exactly trapped in Esther," Dean reminded him. "He can visit you at any time. And it's not like he doesn't have a phone, or an internet connection for that matter." He shrugged, hands loose on the wheel. "I mean, it's not like we've lost the ability to do the switcheroo, either, so if you want to get girlie with him in a motel room in future, I'm not about to judge you."

"Gender isn't an issue," Sam firmly snapped. He sank in on his ire, misery misting his sight. "I'm just going to miss him. That's all."

"Yeah," Dean replied, not sure of how healthy this weirdly intense attraction was, especially since it clearly crossed a few lines that he wasn't willing to go over himself. "What can I say? Us Winchesters sure know how to have a damned good time."

Sam picked at a stray feather that softly fell onto his lap. He rolled it gently back and forth between his forefinger and thumb while Dean fumbled at the cassette deck, searching out a decent song to blare through the highway with. The plastic sheet duct taped to the rear windshield flapped furiously in the breeze, sending them all shivering as Dean pressed his foot heavy on the accelerator, bringing the Impala up to the province's suicidal, but government sanctioned, speed.

Sam dropped the small feather onto Dean's lap, where it gently rested on his inner thigh.

"Slut," Sam said.

Dean popped in his chosen cassette, his wide grin meeting his brother's.

"You know it."

AC/DC blared down the stretch of near abandoned Alberta highway. Icy winds carried heavy metal guitar riffs deep into the plains and valleys of the landscape.

A rabbit poking at the side of the highway pricked up its ears. He bounded away in shocked surprise, his quiet equilibrium disturbed. The black Impala tore through the snowy landscape like an accidental splash of ink on a blank, white page.

END


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